


No Time for Sparks

by beta_omega



Series: Head Is Not My Home [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I think?, Pack Dynamics, Slow Build, Wolfsbane, allison/scott not main pairing, rated for language, shittyalpha!derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-23 04:24:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beta_omega/pseuds/beta_omega
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Kate’s not that bad. You just don’t give her enough of a chance.”</p><p>“You know how I feel about her, mom. That woman has never treated me like a real human being, and I never even did anything wrong.”</p><p>“You threw a fit in her kitchen and broke her best set of dishes. How did you expect her to react?”</p><p>“I don’t know. I just didn’t expect being locked in the basement to be her first option!”</p><p>Okay, maybe a little dramatic, but it was the truth. It wasn’t Aisling's fault that she had fits though. Certain smells had a way of triggering an anxiety attack, and Kate was just the type to exploit that because it was "funny." Really, Kate brought those broken dishes on herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introductions

“It’s so good to see you again, Aisling. I heard about your injury. Feeling better, I hope?”

  
Aisling eyed the sunnily dressed therapist warily. Six months recovering in the hospital and at home had left her with more time than she had ever wanted to practice her meditation techniques. To be thrown back into therapy the second she was able to move on her own was the last thing she wanted to do with her newfound freedom. Still, it was the first thing her parents demanded, and she could hardly refuse them for all the monetary support they offered.

She cocked her head to the side at the thought, well, the monetary support her mother offered. Her father was much better at acting as the shoulder to cry on lately. Literally more than figuratively considering the pain of walking when she first woke up.

“I can walk now. That’s pretty neat, I guess,” she muttered. She shrugged her shoulders noncommittally.

Another scribble on that damned notepad.

“And how did that make you feel?” Oh, good lord, she could have lived without the stereotypical question.

“What?” She pretended to pick out invisible cotton from her ear because surely even her therapist had better questions than that in her repertoire. And she’d had such high hopes for her too. “The injury in the first place or the recovery? I feel fine.”

“The injury. How did it make you feel?”

“I lost almost a year of school because of it. I lost my scholarships because of it. I can’t go to college because of it. How is it supposed to make me feel?”

Her therapist fought to keep her eyes from rolling at Aisling’s sarcasm.

“Please, Aisling, I am only trying to help you. You understand that, don’t you? You have a unique form of anxiety, and six months is a long time to go without practicing the techniques you’ve been taught.”

“I’m fine. I haven’t had an attack since the accident. I remember all the breathing exercises, everything.”

Her therapist clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth causing Aisling to roll her eyes and force herself out of the ridiculously uncomfortable brown leather lounge chair only therapists liked to buy. Without turning to see the frown on the older woman’s face, she strode toward the immense floor-length windows lining the north wall, really the office’s only redeeming quality. The view was part of the reason Aisling even bothered to attend the sessions.

Seriously, it was a great view. The therapist definitely got the better end of the real estate on the lot, the immense windows looking out far across the treetops of the greenbelt running through town. The forest stretched on for miles, the older pines peeking out over top of their neighbors, until tall office buildings and parking lots broke it up. Even so, there were only so many buildings until the trees took over again, running right up to the edges of the canyon walls. Aisling supposed it was more of a valley, but the highways bordering the small town that was more trees than buildings cut such sharp lines into the rock walls that it more closely resembled the former.

“Pardon me for saying so, but you don’t seem fine.”

Aisling ground her teeth, her eyes focused like lasers on a ruddy brown and white speckled pigeon on a windowsill of the office building across the street. It pecked around for crumbs, bobbing its head as it moved along until it stopped and faced the office window. Almost as if it could sense her seething anger, it took off and disappeared around the corner, the bright light shining through its pale feathers as it twirled up and out of the way.

“Well, isn’t it your job to fix me?” Aisling hissed from her position in front of the windows, arms folded across her chest.

There was nothing more than silence for quite some time, and purely out of curiosity, Aisling strained her ears to hear anything of her therapist’s movements. She would not budge from the window, not until she was certain those judgmental eyes had toned back down to at least a semblance of actual concern.

Scratchy paper rustling together. She must be filling out a new prescription, that or another referral, though Aisling doubted it was the latter. For how much she loathed attending these sessions, every time she was given a referral, matters only grew worse.

As Dr. Carroway liked to say, she had a “very unique form of anxiety.” That and an unusual breed of personality disorder and unresolved childhood trauma.

“Aisling, are you listening to me?” the doctor’s voice broke her out of her thoughts.

“What?”

“I wrote another prescription for you. I have it from your parents that you’ll be spending a year out of town.” A pause. “Without therapy.”  
Aisling bristled. Even hearing from her parents the news that she’d be dumped in a middle-of-nowhere town was better than the way this batty old therapist put it.

“I don’t want a lack of medication to be a problem for you, so I’ve written you a new prescription for more refills. You remember how many you’re supposed to take?”

“I’m not an idiot.”

“No, I suppose you’re not by your test scores, but still, I know that being moved to an unfamiliar place and being expected to stay there alone for a year is no easy task. You’ve just woken from a coma, been given disarming news on top of that, and now this. You were not in a good place before the accident, and I cannot imagine the place you’re in now. Please, Aisling, look at me.”

Disgruntled and reluctant, Aisling finally moved away from the window, instead standing behind the stupid brown couch thing, her mud brown eyes locked with the dark eyes of her therapist.

“What?”

“Let’s do a breathing exercise, just for old time’s sake.”

With a groan, Aisling settled herself into the chair, fighting hard to keep her anger from rising. The chair really was horribly uncomfortable. Eyes still focused on Dr. Carroway, she took a deep breath in and shut her eyes against the world.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock went the metronome on Dr. Carroway’s desk. Another breath in. Another breath out.

When she exhaled, it was like she was in another world. She could hear the blood pounding in her ears, a regular, steady beat like a drum. There were no upticks, no upheavals, no spikes of fear. She was calm, and she was strong. All the sounds beyond her body melted into nothing, and when she woke from the trance, Dr. Carroway smiled a silly fake smile but allowed Aisling to leave the room anyway.

Maybe these sessions weren’t so bad after all. Dr. Carroway’s breathing exercises that Aisling had at first deemed highly unnecessary and idiotic had a way of giving her an unparalleled sense of clarity. If waking from the coma hadn’t actually been such a negative experience for her, Aisling might have equated this sensation with that.

All the time before the session, she was angry, skittish, and too anxious to sit in one place for long, but afterwards she felt like she could see things to the most minute details, like she could take on the world. A power surged through her veins that forced all the thoughts of her injuries to the back of her mind. In the hour following the sessions, for one whole hour, she was untouchable.

But then the relief and total awareness faded, and Aisling was right back to square one.

Still, one hour of relief a day was better than nothing. Or at least that’s how she rationalized things.

* * *

 

Walking home was arguably not the safest thing to do after therapy. As damaged and as vulnerable as it made her feel, the rush of power and clarity that came after forced away all doubts about being able to care for herself.

Aisling was strong, and one (admittedly, life-changing) accident wasn’t going to take that strength from her.

That was the chief reason why she generally took the long route home, through the greenbelt instead of around it. Being a small town had its benefits. Instead of rushing to cut down the intruding forest, they built around it, incorporating it into the town’s landscape by paving sidewalks at its edges instead of fencing it off. What limited wildlife ventured down the slopes rarely ran the risk of causing traffic accidents. Bixby was a town of few people and most of them were getting on in years, preferring to retire to a quiet, steady life in the secluded valley where they could enjoy nature. In all seriousness, that’s what the brochure said when her parents moved when she was still young.

Funny, she hadn’t thought back to that time in ages.

She had barely been able to walk when they pulled her from their first home and drove as far away as they could bear to. All she could remember was waking up in a hospital similar to how she’d woken up from her latest trauma without any recollection of what landed her there in the first place. According to her medical records, her fever following her admission to the hospital had lasted four days until it broke. After that, her parents left their old home behind and brought her to Bixby.

Each step was measured and placed carefully on the fallen leaves coating the floor of the forest, still slick from rain earlier in the week. She’d taken the small hiking trail behind Dr. Carroway’s office and scaled the steeply angled wall with the aid of the tough vines and hardy trees lining the path still small enough for her hands to wrap around.

Pushing herself higher up the slope had its negatives though. Her hip, even after several reconstructive surgeries, refused to return to its full range of motion. Well, more specifically it was her femur that was giving her trouble, having broken so close to the hip bone, and the muscles joining to it. Atrophy was her enemy.

Running at a competitive level was completely out of the question although her mother made an obnoxiously big deal out of running just to stay in shape in spite of the injury. Aisling knew full well that her mother didn’t care for her progress with physical therapy. It was just an empty show of support because really, it was rude to lay all the blame on Aisling for suddenly being forced to drop off the athletic scholarship if she couldn’t make good on it. She was hit by a car, she was the victim in all of this. And as much as it sucked, and as much as it had thrown a wrench into her mother’s precious plans, none of it was Aisling’s fault.

Still, being outside and free to move was a double-edged sword. It was refreshing to have so much freedom, and with her senses as heightened as they were, she had never felt more at ease. Yet, she couldn’t completely force out the nagging reminder that she would never be able to run as well as she had before.

Grumbling under her breath, she stomped out of the forest and slid easily down the gravel-littered path that led into her backyard, her hands easing her down on the heavy ropes she tied on the bordering trees.

A tall white fence bordered the backyard, keeping it safe from prying eyes, but with the help of her ropes, it was simple enough to belay herself down, feet pressed hard against the painted surface. Her mother wouldn’t like that, but at least hosing off the mud meant the rose bushes underneath got their daily dose of water.

“Ash? How many times have I told you to keep your phone on if you’re going to go into the forest?” her dad asked nonchalantly, already setting the table for dinner when Aisling came in through the patio door.

“Maybe ten times?”

“Try upwards of a hundred, and you’ll be closer than ten. Shoes off before your mother sees you, and help me with the place settings so I can get back to checking on the fish.”

She grinned at the sound of fish, actually the smell of it too. Lemon and garlic and rosemary filled the air, and she could have salivated at the thought of it, licking her lips.

Her boots left on the screened porch outside, her jacket sleeves rolled up, and her hands scrubbed, she was ready to get to work.

Gregory Jasper was a good guy, though he generally preferred to be called Greg by his colleagues. Working as a professor gave him the benefits of not having to work all the time, especially not on call, since he had to drive out to the next town to get to the actual campus. That usually left him with a lot of time with Aisling, which she definitely appreciated following her brush with death, as it were. His constant presence was why she was so much closer to him compared to her mother.

Strange how that worked, but Candice Japser, all cool and collected and totally business professional, had from the start wanted only the best for her only daughter, demanding the highest standards for her education. It wasn’t an ideal, loving environment, but Aisling knew she meant well. They were well off, but getting into a top tier school was more than a little out of their price range.

Her parents worked well together for all the grief Aisling had brought them, but what family was totally perfect?

Dinner wasn’t all that tense of an affair considering the topic of conversation that came up more often than not the closer they got to the end of summer.

Losing an academic scholarship had done a number on all their plans, and as much as Aisling hated the thought of it, she couldn’t be expected to manage the house on her own for an entire year. She glanced at her mother through her bangs, curly and sideswept, for any indication that they might breach the subject today.

Her mom just continued eating, using her fork with careful precision to lift steamed carrots to her lips, while with her other hand, she held open the latest issue of the Economist to some article on the current state of foreign policy with China. How riveting. Obviously, no discussion coming from that side of the table.

Her father wasn’t much better though. Teaching English had its drawbacks, one of them being the constant load of papers needing to be graded. Small colleges like his had small classes, but even so, he taught at least two or three at a time, and papers added up quickly. Once or twice, he chuckled, even smiled, as his eyes skimmed over the lines, the red of his pen reflecting on his glasses as he turned the pages over. At least he was enjoying himself.

Even if dinner wasn’t exactly tense, it wasn’t a light, happy atmosphere either. Just one day closer to deciding her doom.


	2. Argent-time

By the time Aisling was dressed and downstairs for breakfast, both of her parents were already seated at the formal dining table, dressed in their Sunday best. On a Tuesday.

Okay. So it was going to be one of those days, she mused to herself before slipping into a seat between them. Already she felt painfully out of place in the dining room, her parents all decked out for a nice day, clothes pressed and smelling faintly of lilacs and fresh linens, while she seemed stuck under an invisible raincloud. The harsh coal black of her jeans and the miserable grey of her oversized jumper stood out in stark contrast against the pale yellow walls and bright white floral-upholstered set of furniture on the opposite side of the room.

Sucking her bottom lip into her mouth, she tracked her eyes from her mother to her father, neither one inclined to acknowledge her presence just yet. Her father, the greatly esteemed English professor at the  neighboring university was currently engrossed in the daily crossword puzzle though the tip of his pen hadn’t so much as touched the paper for the last five minutes. Across the table, her mother busied herself fiddling with her makeup, compact mirror in hand.

When she released her lip, she steeled herself with a deep breath and asked, “So, today’s the day then, isn’t it?”

Neither one answered, but very obviously they stopped pretending to ignore her, choosing to instead wait out the other in the sudden hush.

Her father was the first to break. “Sweetie, you know this is hard for us, but we just weren’t able to file for refunds fast enough. This trip has been years in the planning--.”

“Yeah, I know all that, thanks,” Aisling cut in quickly, waving her hands sharply in front of him. “Just tell me straight what’s going to happen.”

“Your mother has arranged for you to stay with her cousin, Chris Argent, in Beacon Hills. Everything you need has been packed in the van. We leave in an hour.”

 

“Better than Auntie Kate,” Aisling grumbled to herself before heading back upstairs, her appetite now forgotten.

She’d been packed for several weeks now. At least for the most part. The whole idea of a move hadn’t been total news to her, and her parents had been planning it for ages. Of course she couldn’t be expected to stay in Bixby totally by herself, but Jesus. This was ridiculous.

Fuming she slammed her foot into a tower of cardboard boxes containing all her books, dropping to the ground the instant the pain arced up her spine. With a whimper, she massaged her still ringing hip.

“Mother of God,” she hissed, forcing herself to stand.

In one hour she’d be in Beacon Hills with a family whose females were generally displeased with her. One good set of China wasted, and both Kate and Victoria Argent deemed her unfit to be in the household unsupervised. Hell, she wasn’t even allowed out past eight at night whenever she was dumped in with them.

But if she was going to be left with them for an entire school year, maybe more, thing were definitely going to have to change. She was perfectly of age, and she wasn’t about to go full on crazy rebel on them and get herself into more trouble with the women of the house. Kate was terrifying enough on a good day.

Okay, so obviously she’d have to prove herself to them somehow, but whatever it took, she wasn’t going to let herself be locked away like some dumb animal.

That’s good. This is good. Aisling nodded to herself a couple of times. She could pull through this. What was one year with the Argents compared to a year in, like, somewhere crazier than Beacon Hills? This was going to be a cakewalk. Definitely.

“Come on, Ash, out of the car. The Argents are already waiting for us inside.” Her dad rapped impatiently on the rear window.

“Why do I have to stay with them?” She was currently biding her time, stretched out lazily across the backseat while her mother sat out front, glowering at her nails and no doubt cursing the nail salon for such a shoddy job.

“Would you rather we left you with Chris’s sister? What was her name? Kate?” Her mother questioned idly from up front, a wicked smile on her face.

Low blow.

Instantly Aisling paled and her hands scrambled with the door lock to get it open. She was so insistent to get out that she propelled herself out of the van and tumbled out onto the grassy lawn, her chest rising and falling rapidly.

Breathe, in and out. Just breathe, she had to remind herself when she could feel the bile rising in the back of her throat and her shoulders began to tense with immense pain. Yeah, just breathe, and it’ll all be okay.

Because it was just that easy.

Her mother rolled down the passenger side window to look down at her and laugh. “Kate’s not that bad. You just don’t give her enough of a chance.”

Aisling stood and brushed the grass from her clothes, a scowl set deep in her face. “You know how I feel about her, mom. That woman has never treated me like a real human being, and I never even did anything wrong.”

“You threw a fit in her kitchen and broke her best set of dishes. How did you expect her to react?” her mother shouted back through the open window.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t expect being locked in the basement to be her first option!”

Okay, maybe a little dramatic, but it was the truth. It wasn’t Aisling's fault that she had fits though. Certain smells had a way of triggering an anxiety attack, and Kate was just the type to exploit that because it was "funny." Really, Kate brought those broken dishes on herself.

Aisling scowled at her mother one last time before she tried to cool herself off. Shouldering her backpack and grabbing her two suitcases from the trunk, she stormed up to the front porch of the massive Argent house to avoid further discussion with her mother.

It was always her mother testing her patience, the magnificent small-town lawyer and the big-shot company spokesperson Candice Jasper. It was also her mother’s idea to plan the ridiculous year-and-a-half-long trip around the world to celebrate Aisling attending her first year at college, and her idea still to go through with the stupid trip even after it turned out Aisling could no longer attend college as planned.

It wasn’t as though Aisling planned to make a mess of things. It just sort of happened.

She’d just been out running. The state championships were coming up, and as the best runner in the town, she wasn’t about to slack off in spite of the rare four-day weekend.

So she went out. She wasn’t stupid either. Even in a small town, accidents could happen so she wore the dumbest neon reflective yellow safety vest she could buy over her tight black sports jacket and a bright-as-daylight-headlamp on her forehead.

Not like any of it helps though when the person in the driver’s seat can’t tell the sun from the moon because they were so inebriated.

When she opened her eyes for the first time since she lost consciousness, all the doctors said she was lucky to be alive. _They had never seen anyone heal from wounds as bad as she’d had them. It was a mercy that she’d never even been in pain._ They said a lot of things about how she ought to have died. It was like they’d expected her to die. According to the few nurses who would talk to her, her parents had actually been advised to remove her from life support, but they’d been adamant about leaving it on. According to the one nurse, it seemed like her parents knew she would recover; it was only a matter of time. She’d been in a coma for six months, recovering slowly, her body pulling itself back from the brink, until she could stand again.

She didn’t remember anything of the accident, though the parents of the boy responsible took full responsibility and covered all of her hospital expenses and the physical therapy fees. It was sweet, a drunken boy drunkenly confessing his sins to his parents. Actually, it was pretty lucky because otherwise she wouldn’t have been much help identifying the culprit, and her family would be faced with many more bills than they already faced with her therapy already taking its toll. Aisling’s parents took care of the mental therapy side as they always had. All she had to do was sign off that she wouldn’t pursue the issue further and she could move on with her life.

Only she’d been out of commission for so long that she’d lost her scholarships and her senior year was discounted for too many missed days. To put a cherry on top, she was being dumped by her parents so they could continue with their plans for an unbearably long vacation, and she hated the Argents.

Actually that was being a little unfair.

Aisling only hated Kate Argent because that woman was hell-sent. Her parents never allowed her to stay with anyone else overnight, never let her out to party, never let her out to a sleepover even as a child. Apparently, the nighttime was a dangerous time for her to be left alone or unsupervised, and the only family her parents trusted to keep an eye on her was the Argent family.

Things might not have been so bad if the Argents hadn’t had to take Allison to the emergency room for a freak flu and called Kate in to babysit Aisling in the meantime. To say it was disastrous would be an understatement, and it had led to a deep-seated loathing of the woman that Aisling refused to let go.

Honestly, who locks someone in the basement for breaking a couple of dishes? Kate knew damn well about Aisling’s condition, how she could get ill from certain substances, how she couldn’t handle too many stressors at once, and still it was somehow Aisling’s fault for having a reaction.

_Breathe, breathe, just breathe. She’s not here. Allison is. Allison is nice,_ was _nice last time I checked._ Aisling thought to herself as she knocked on the door.

Curse her luck. At least Kate wasn’t around to open the door, but Chris Argent wasn’t much better. He was an authoritative sort of guy, definitely more into grounding his daughter than her own father had ever been with her, although Aisling mostly chalked it up to her “unresolved childhood trauma.” Apparently, she’s too fragile to ground officially, but reminding her that friends were an impossibility wasn’t enough to break her.

“Mr. Argent, nice to see you again,” she mumbled half-heartedly before her dad joined her at her side and stuck out a hand in greeting.

“Chris, hey. I heard about Victoria. How are you holding up?” her dad offered once they’d finished shaking hands.

“What? What happened to Mrs. Argent?” Aisling spoke up before she could help herself.

“Ash,” Chris spoke softly as if he didn’t want to startle her, even though his face suggested that he was about to break apart himself.

Well, if things couldn’t be awkward soon enough. She gulped nervously eyes wide.

“Why don’t you say hello to Allison? Your father and I have a lot to discuss.”

She opened her mouth for scarcely a heartbeat before wisely shutting it again and slipping past her uncle with genuine concern on her face. Victoria Argent had never been very kind to her, sort of like Kate had been, but even Aisling knew that she loved her family and would stop at nothing to protect them. It was kind of sweet even if it put her out of her comfort zone, just being in a room alone with the woman.

The brunette was hardly halfway down the hall before she was attacked by a wildly ecstatic teenage girl. To anyone else, it might have been strange how neither one was where they ought to be given their ages. Allison ought to be one year up in school, but moving around almost constantly had forced her to drop down instead. Aisling should have been set to go to college by now, but instead she would be looking for work during her gap year and deciding a new major now that professional athleticism was out of the question.

But this was just their luck, stuck in a rut facing a miserable climb back out.

“Well, obviously puberty was kind to one of us,” Aisling laughed into Allison’s perfectly curled dark brown locks, spitting out the few strands that got themselves stuck in her lip gloss.

Allison pulled back with a shrewd expression before she punched her older cousin lightly in the shoulder. “Yeah, and you don’t look half bad yourself. So, do you still like lilac?”

“Still?” She raised a wary eyebrow. “Allison, what are you talking about? You know I hate lilac.”

All the teenager could do was laugh hysterically before practically sprinting downstairs and ducking through the doorway into the spare bedroom.

Allison was a horrible friend. Officially. That was it.

For all her teasing, Aisling had to be glad that the guest room hadn’t actually been painted in lilac, but it may as well have been. Whoever did the interior decorating had the strange, misguided idea of having a nautical theme. It was subdued, yeah, but the striped blue and white sheets and the complete set of pale wooden furniture, right down to the hardwood floors, spoke volumes. When she lay down on the bed, she found herself looking into a painting with hard brush strokes of a small fishing boat on rolling waves a short distance away from a muddled harbor. The colors were blended nicely, and the contrast between the sky and the sea was fairly well done. She just never really liked the sea herself. Something about not having her feet steady under her was unsettling. The scents were always too strong when her parents drove her out to the pier. It made her stomach churn, her nose burn, and eyes water with the sharpness of it all.

Before she had another round with the toilet, Aisling rushed out of the room and into the hallway. Her hasty retreat brought Allison hurrying after her.

Her small, neatly manicured hands were capable of a stronger grip than she appeared to possess when she started to pull Aisling back into the guest room. The effort was wasted though from the moment Aisling caught a snippet of their parents’ conversation in the living room.

“-mother doesn’t want her out after dark.” The voice was slow, measured. Allison’s dad, then. Chris was always cool and collected about everything compared to her father. Aisling guessed it was due to the Argent blood between her mom and Chris Argent. Everything was business with them.

“I’m not saying you should ignore my wife’s instructions, just give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“Candice and I have a _history_. I think she knows what she’s doing.”

“Aisling is good. She’s- she’s, God, she’s not like what Kate says she is.”

Allison’s grip tightened for a moment.

“Said. I’m sorry, Chris.”

“No, no. It’s fine. She stays inside. End of story. I’ll decide when that changes, not you.”

“I think I know my daughter.”

“Greg. I don’t want to insult her, but you know where I’m coming from. Now you know where I stand.”

Literally. Aisling could hear Chris rise from the sofa from the slight crinkle of the leather. She tensed in the hallway and remained that way until she could hear the clink of glasses in the kitchen.

The rest of the conversation was muffled through the additional wall, but the harder she concentrated, the sharper her hearing became. This conversation had better be worth the headache intensifying behind her eyelids. Her eyes smarted from the added effort, but she wasn’t about to drop it.

“Your flight is leaving soon. Your wife is probably wondering why you haven’t returned to the car yet.”

Someone sighed, but Aisling couldn’t be sure who it was.

“Just let me say goodbye to her. I’ll just be a minute.”

Chris hummed in acknowledgement before heading upstairs.

The girls had scarcely enough time to duck back into the guest room to make themselves look as natural as possible before Greg came into the room looking thoroughly ashamed with himself. He rubbed his hands repeatedly against his jeans, the cuffs of his button-down riding up his forearms from the friction, before he raised a hand to run through what was left of his balding buzz cut. His smile only lasted a second after he waved in greeting to Allison, shifting her weight from one foot to the other in front of the empty computer desk.

“Should I- do you want me to wait outside?” she offered helpfully.

“No, it’ll be quick,” he told her. His eyes crinkled around the edges when he faced Aisling with a weak smile. He spread out his arms as wide as he could get them. “Come here and give your old man a hug, sweetheart.”

Aisling couldn’t say no to that even if he hadn’t been so near to tears. She’d miss him, that was for sure. Apparently her mother couldn’t even be bothered to leave the car to say her fare wells, but after a while, she’d definitely miss her presence nagging her about dressing better and whatnot.

With his arms wrapped around her, he whispered into his daughter’s ear with surprising urgency, “Don’t let this place get you down, sweetheart, okay? You’ve got a good heart, and don’t you go forgetting that. Chris'll give you a tough time at the start, but he means well. Just listen to him, okay? He’ll let up soon enough.”

“I’m gonna miss you.” And it was true.

He finally pulled back and let her go with a parting clap on the back. “Don’t get into any trouble, all right?”

“Promise,” Aisling mumbled sheepishly, but she smiled nonetheless at the sentiment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so obviously the summary I use for the story wasn't in the first chapter, and Kate's not all that central, but it was my favorite part that I had so far. Also, it's definitely slow going, and I'm sorry for that. Next chapter you'll see more of our favorite characters. I promise.


	3. Reaction Rates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “No way. I can’t bring my mom into this. It’s bad enough that she knows I’m a werewolf now. If there’s going to be trouble, I can’t be a part of it.”
> 
> “She barfed on your shoes, dude. You’re already a part of this, whatever it is."

 “H-hey, Allison, and, um, well, Allison’s friend.”

Allison laughed kindly at the kid, but all Aisling could do was stand by awkwardly and wait for an introduction, never one to offer her name first. In the meantime, she did give him a quick once over. He certainly didn’t present himself as much of a threat like Allison always had. Where she was confidence personified, he was all gangly arms and legs and tough talk without the brawns to back it up, but he was smart, or at least he seemed to be. People who could talk as quickly as he could didn’t have the luxury to second guess themselves when they rattled off facts.

Plus, he had these giant honey brown doe eyes, too many freckles and moles on his exposed forearms, and an efficient buzz cut that all leant him a very childish, juvenile sort of image. Definitely, not the kind of person Aisling had to be wary around, and that was something she could appreciate. Props to Allison for having such good choice in friends.

“I’m Stiles, Stiles Stilinkski, by the way, and before you say it, it’s a nickname,” he quipped, wagging a finger in Aisling’s face before she could even consider the repetitive factor of his name.

Instead she offered her own. “Aisling Jasper. It’s nice to know Allison hasn’t gotten herself stuck on the ‘bad boys’ look in her guys again.”

It was Allison’s turn to splutter now. “Wh-what? He’s not by boyfriend! His best friend, Scott, is!”

“Oh. Well, where’s this Scott then, hm? Let’s meet him, see if he gets my seal of approval.”

Aisling winced mockingly at Allison’s attempt to clap her hard on the back as all three moved away from the school and down towards the parking lot.

“I’m not a kid anymore, Ash. I think I can choose for myself. Besides, Scott is definitely not the ‘bad boy’ type you’re hoping to find.”

At that both Allison and Stiles could barely hold in their laughter regarding the still missing boy. She scoffed incredulously and shook her head. These kids were going to be the death of her, all giggles and smiles, just what the doctor ordered, she reminded herself somberly. This is good. This is what she needed. Stiles she could definitely get used to. He was definitely too upbeat to ignore.

By the time the two girls reached Allison’s car, which she was loaning to Aisling for the moment, Scott had yet to appear. Normally Aisling might have been content to wait in the car with the AC on, but today felt different.

From the moment Aisling stepped out of the car to pick Allison up from school, she had felt a strange weight in the air. It was like walking through a field of electricity or something, when you were some magnet constantly being pushed back. Discomforting, yeah, but since Allison seemed to be just fine, Aisling hesitated to mention it.

The air even smelled different, not something totally out of place like a rotting mouse in a flower shop sort of obvious. No, this was like Earth itself had taken a tangible form, all the scents of nature coming together into one incredibly concentrated being. Damp earth fresh from a light rainfall, pine trees with their needles still laden with droplets from the early morning fog. Wildflowers from far afield, the sweet tang of citrus fruits ripe enough to eat, the warm scent of honey deep within a bee hive. The scent of the earth overpowered all else, and Aisling was nearly driven mad by it.

Her head pounded as her chest tightened. Breathe, remind yourself to breathe.

The nausea clawing its way up her throat grew more intense the more she tried to fight the urge to go to the source of the Earth-smell. No, the Earth-smell was bad, it was a bad thing. The last time she’d smelled it so strongly was during the accident. Her parents wouldn’t tell her anything about it, but from the way they both stiffened at the mere mention of it, she supposed she didn’t want to hear it anyway. All she knew was that it hadn’t been a good thing in the past.

That fear forced her to fight against the urge to find the source, ignoring the increasing knots in her stomach.

Still, when the hairs on the back of her neck began to rise in time to the shiver racing down her spine, she could have sworn her heart stopped beating when she saw it. She turned slowly on her heel, keeping her movements slow and cautious so as not to draw the attention of either Stiles or Allison, who were still on the lookout for their friend. At first glance she assumed it was just a gust of wind playing with the shadows in the trees across the lacrosse field, but the longer she stared, the longer the shadows stared back, scarlet shining from deep within the darkness.

She narrowed her eyes to try to get a better focus on whatever it was at the field’s edge, tuning out all other sounds. Her ears were straining and still all she could hear was the whistling in the trees.

“Ash. Ash! ASH! Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

Out of nowhere Allison appeared at her side, shaking her with a strength Aisling hadn’t known she was capable of. She flinched at the sudden screaming in her ear, backing away immediately, and unfortunately into the path of a very expensive looking car trying to get out of the parking lot.

The blaring of the horn sent her to her knees, her arms wrapped tightly around her head. Her ears were still ringing when Allison and Stiles both struggled to bring her to her feet. Allison waved off the boy, got him back onto the sidewalk, and carefully maneuvered Aisling so her body leaned against the car’s trunk. From that position, Allison could place a hand over Aisling’s forehead, frowning at the radiating heat. Her cousin was seriously burning up.

“Oh my god, Aisling, I’m calling my dad. You aren’t driving anymore today.”

As Allison tiredly shoved her around the car and into the back seat, Stiles watched her from his spot on the sidewalk, dividing his attention between her and the school gates for his best buddy. She raised a hand to her forehead and rubbed her temples, hoping it was just a trick of the light, even if it didn’t feel like it.

Allison and Stiles continued to chat on the sidewalk, Allison purposefully standing with her back to the car, her high heels putting her at just the right height for her shoulder to block Aisling’s view of Stiles’ mouth. Okay, so no lip reading. Like that was a good sign. Obviously whatever they were talking about was not a conversation that included her.

Thankfully the conversation didn’t last long at all once a strange boy Aisling hadn’t seen before clapped Stiles on the back. Her eyes watched him carefully, picking him apart even as a disquieting feeling grew in her stomach. He had a tilt to his mouth like his jaw had been broken before and hadn’t been allowed to heal properly, but his eyes were a deep brown filled with laughter as he greeted his friends and apologized for his tardiness. Never once did he fully shift his body to face the car, but Aisling had seen him steal a glance or two her way.

Well, that was fine. If Allison didn’t want to introduce her to her friends, Aisling wouldn’t intrude. All the better to watch from afar. Actually it was much better to stay seated now that she felt she was going to be sick.

What was going on today? In the span of less than half an hour she had gone from heart-pounding nervousness to now this gut-wrenching illness. She could do with a quick ride home about now, but apparently that was not in the cards for her because Allison appeared at the window, knocking on the glass to get her to roll it down.

“You coming out to meet Scott or what?”

She groaned. “Please, Allison. I just need to go home right now.”

“It’ll be quick. Promise.”

“You cannot hold me responsible for anything that happens. Understand?”

Suffice it to say that better first impressions had been had before, and Scott’s first impression of Aisling was far from positive. From the speckles of vomit on his jeans and the puddle on and around his sneakers to the never-ending flurry of _sorry_ issuing from Allison’s mouth, the poor boy was at a loss for words. Needless to say, Aisling was too. Instead, she was groaning in pain from the back seat where she was quickly returned.

“Oh my god, is she going to be okay?” he asked after a while.

Allison ran a hand through her hair, miraculously doing nothing to take away from how flawless it looked, and bit at her nails. This was definitely not how she expected things to go.

“I’d stay and help you clean up, but I have to get her back to my dad. See you guys tomorrow?”

“To your dad’s? Why not the hospital? She doesn’t look good. My mom will take care of her.”

She sighed, worrying at her lower lip. “It’s like what Lydia would say. _Psychosomatic_. Ash is fine, something just triggered her.”

The boys were both silent, a rare feat for Stiles, as Allison finally got into her car and shot out of the parking lot with one last sorrowful smile their way.

_Psychosomatic?_ Huh, that was new, though it was right in a sense. An illness caused by internal conflict or stress, courtesy of Merriam-Webster.

If anyone was stressed right now, it was Aisling. The strength of the Earth-smell at the edge of the field had been overpowering enough, but to have it 100% all up in her face, Jesus, she had not been prepared for that. Standing face-to-face with Scott had felt like something inside her was about a second away from breaking free.

Well, obviously, something got out in the form of vomit, but that only made Aisling feel even worse. Sure, it had been a temporary relief, like opening the valve on a can of compressed air. It took the edge off, but there was still a ton of air that wanted to escape. Even from the passenger seat, Aisling could watch Allison making her apologies, but all she could think about was the rising fever from having to stomp out the almost primal urge to run away and into the woods.

No, she couldn’t let that happen. That flight response was for the weak. _Just breathe, and you can get through this_. There was nothing to fear and no threat to run from. Scott obviously had Allison’s seal of approval, and Allison was generally a good judge of character.

The farther they drove from the school, the better Aisling felt. No more strange Earth-sell, and her clarity slowly crept back in. Bumps in the road weren’t kind to her, the thought of vomiting was still fresh in her mind. Allison did her best though to make the ride as smooth as possible. Giving up on trying to support her head against the headrest without puking, Aisling let her body slump across the back seat, curling up into a protective little ball with her arms wrapped tight around her waist. Good Lord, please let Allison hit all the green lights today.

While Aisling groaned in apparent agony, Allison continued to drive. God, her dad was going to kill her. One two-second meeting with a werewolf and Aisling was down and out for the count.

 

That was definitely weird, not the weirdest thing to happen in Beacon Hills, but it was up there all right.

 

* * *

“So, first impression?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t like we got the chance to introduce ourselves in between the vomiting and driving off,” Scott huffed, throwing himself haphazardly onto Stiles’ bed.

“Well, you’re a werewolf, dummy. Your special wolfy senses must’ve told you something, right?”

Scott propped himself up on his elbows to get a good look at Stiles lazily spinning himself in circles in his desk chair. He shook his head at his best friend’s antics before reassuring him, “I saw her for literally all of two minutes, Stiles. And that’s two minutes _max_.”

“Yeah, and I met her for, okay, so maybe five minutes, before she spaced out. Now you can’t tell me she’s totally normal because even I get a little chill, you know, when a certain someone decides to creep through the woods around the school.”

“What are you talking about?”

Stiles threw out an arm, trying to stop himself dramatically so that he faced Scott, except he overshot his arm and ended up slamming it painfully into his keyboard tray. Wincing, he took a deep breath to recover his manliness.

“I’m talking about Derek. Dude was there, and she knew it too, I’m telling you.”

“All because she _spaced out_?”

Oh, really, Scott. Air quotes? Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Come on, buddy. Work with me here. She knew Derek was there, and she’s never even met the guy. Just think really hard, before she evacuated the no doubt pungent contents of her stomach, and tell me what you smelled, _before_ you smelled her.”

Scott shrugged his shoulders dramatically. “Maybe Derek was there. _Maybe_. The scent was faint. He must have been gone at least five minutes by the time I got to you guys.”

Okay, Stiles could work with that. Definitely better than hearing some other wolf was stalking an innocent human. Or not innocent. Or not human. Really, Beacon Hills had seen enough to make Stiles second guess everything.

“Okay, and what did she smell like? Human? Wolf? Mountain lion?”

With an overdrawn sigh, Scott dropped back fully onto the bed. “I don’t know, Stiles. Maybe we’ll see her tomorrow and I can smell her better, but I couldn’t tell anything different. I mean, she already smelled like she was going to be sick, you know, sweaty, sickly sweet smells, but that’s it, seriously _it_. Now are you going to help me with Economics or not?”

Stiles flailed with annoyance at his friend, but they had told the Sheriff that they were here to study so that’s what they would do. At least for a part of the time, just enough so Stiles wouldn’t feel like he was telling a total lie. And having proof of his efforts was definitely a plus. And he couldn’t let his best buddy flunk out of a grade. That would leave him all by his lonesome to deal with Mrs. Marsh’s English class next year.

As it turns out, Stiles only lasted another hour with his homework, although even that one hour devolved into scribbling inane facts about the now-long forgotten use of Chihuahuas as hot water bottles into his economics paper.

Only a short time later, the battered blue Jeep pulled onto the dirt track in front of the ruined Hale house. According to Scott, Derek’s scent headed for the ruins tonight, not the train depot. Why, though, he couldn’t guess.

The train depot, though still a total shit-hole being abandoned and all, was a vast improvement from sleeping on the scorched floorboards under what little shelter the damaged roof could provide. Plus, the lands had been turned over to the county. Technically, Derek wasn’t even allowed to come out here anymore, but hey, who was going to stop a werewolf?

Just as Stiles opened his mouth to call for the surly Alpha, said wolf appeared in the doorway, dressed in his characteristic grey tee and dark wash jeans. It wasn’t like he exactly got much variety out of his clothes anyway. He didn’t even give the two younger boys an acknowledgement of their presence other than going back inside.

Scott looked at Stiles’ confused expression and shook it off; it was just Derek playing it cool as usual.

No one spoke for a long time.

Derek busied his hands fiddling with the torn and partially melted mesh screen of the kitchen window while Stiles balanced himself on the counter’s edge. Scott just took a seat on the burned couch in the living room on the other side of the counter. They’d all end up in the living room anyway eventually, better to claim a spot now than to wait until Stiles draped himself across it and refused to move. Being a human had those kinds of perks. The Alpha glare only worked on other wolves, and even if it was a little freaky being stared at, Stiles was comfortable with the knowledge that Derek wouldn’t actually hurt a member of his pack, human or not, if it wasn’t warranted. Plus, it just wasn’t worth the effort half the time.

Having played through at least six rounds of Fruit Ninja on his phone, Stiles _humph-_ ed in boredom, dropping his phone onto the charred counter, and leveled his eyes with Derek, who turned at the sound.

“Dude, you gonna fess up or what?”

Derek raised a perfectly neat bushy eyebrow in answer.

“Come on, you were there today, after school, you know, all the kiddies getting out and going home, happens at about 3 o’clock.”

“I know when you get out of school, Stilinski.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course you would, because you were there today.”

Derek moved out of the kitchen and into the living room with laboriously slow steps instead of replying immediately to the poor kid, leaving him to scramble awkwardly off the counter and dart after him.

“Okay, so I can’t hear your heartbeat, but don’t lie to us, all right? You were there, and you seriously wigged out Allison’s friend.”

The Alpha huffed at the name. Of course he would. Allison was an Argent, and every Argent was the same: murderous, ruthless, kill-first-ask-questions-later type of hunter.

“Allison?” he said again. “What happens to her friends isn’t my problem.”

“Dude, she could obviously see you from the parking lot. Like, seriously, see straight across the field, see you-see you. Ask Scott.”

“Well?” Derek intoned, shifting his body to look at the werewolf wonder.

McCall moved uneasily on the couch, just as uncomfortable with what he sensed with Derek as he had been with Stiles. “I don’t know. She smelled off, but it wasn’t like she smelled like immediate danger.”

“Yeah, until she barfed all over your shoes,” Stiles snickered behind his hand before he was suddenly lifted upwards by the front of his shirt.

Eyes flashed red, and he was quickly becoming aware of how close those fangs were to his throat, bared for easy biting thanks to the awkward angle he was being held at.

“What do you mean _she barfed_? What did it look like? Wolfsbane poisoning? Mistletoe?”

It wouldn’t have been too bad a guess if it weren’t definitely wrong. They’d had their fair share of unlucky encounters with both poisons, and if someone knew to exploit it, Derek was all for eliminating the threat post-haste.

Stiles’ hands acting on reflex pushed at the immovable werewolf until he got the picture and let him down. Breathing heavily, Stiles went on to explain methodically. “I mean, she literally barfed all over Scott. It was normal-looking, the sick you get when you’ve been dizzy for too long. It didn’t look like any kind of poisoning, no. That work for you?”

“What caused it?”

“I don’t know. Allison took her out of the car to introduce us, and before we even shook hands, she just,” Scott stopped, clearly exasperated with all of this. “Stiles thinks it’s because of you. Your being there triggered something, and when she met me, that was the final straw.”

“You think she knows about werewolves?” Stiles asked.

“She’s an Argent. I wouldn’t put it past her.” Derek dropped into the loveseat across from Scott and made a steeple with his fingers, watching the sheriff’s son over his fingertips. “How’d she react to _you_?”

Stiles shrugged noncommittally. “I definitely lucked out on the barfing bit, but she was still … off, you know? She just sort of stared at me, like she was picking me apart, and we talked a bit. She’s much quieter than Allison, definitely quieter, not really that talkative, and whenever she looks at you, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Kind of unsettles a guy. And then she just stopped moving. She saw you, dude, and when Allison tried to snap her out of it, Jackson almost ran her over. She seemed pretty decent up until she lost her shit. Just give me a definitive answer. Were you there or not? Or do we need to be worried about another werewolf?”

“That was me. I left after Jackson almost hit her. I didn’t stay long enough to get a clear read on her.”

“Well, she definitely got a clear read on you if it was enough to make her barf all over Scott. Even if she didn’t know about you two, she can definitely tell the difference between people and wolves. She was fine when it was just me and Allison, but you two sent her over the edge.”

“So, what do we do?” Scott asked the Alpha.

For a minute, Derek remained silent, rubbing his thighs to keep his hands occupied. “We watch her. Is she going to be at the school with you?”

Stiles shook his head.

“Well, at least we won’t have to worry about exposing her to the rest of the pack. Directly, at least. But someone’s going to have to keep an eye on her wherever she ends up. Scott, find out what you can from Allison, but stay away from her friend at all costs, whoever she is. We need to know the extent of her knowledge about werewolves. Stiles, get Danny to help you into your dad’s files again. Try to find a record of her, anything you can. Scott, do the same with hospital records from your mom.”

“No way. I can’t bring my mom into this. It’s bad enough that she knows I’m a werewolf now. If there’s going to be trouble, I can’t be a part of it.”

“She barfed on your shoes, dude. You’re already a part of this, whatever it is,” Stiles muttered, already whipping out his phone to get into contact with the teenage hacker.

 “Just talk to people. We need to know what we’re dealing with. And, Scott, make sure none of the others gets close to her at the school.”

Scott nodded mutely and left the room in careful strides, his fingers ghosting over Stiles’ shoulder to get his friend to follow him. Their movements were mechanical and slow with the weight of this new task.

At the threshold of the broken home, Stiles shouted over his shoulder, “Her name’s Aisling. Maybe you can do some reconnaissance too.”

If Stiles had even looked into the dark pit of the living room for a second longer, he would have caught the brief shimmer of red eyes.

_Aisling_. It sounded familiar, but why?

* * *

From Stiles’ first impression, Aisling had seemed mostly harmless if a little disoriented, but if she couldn’t stand the presence of a werewolf for more than a heartbeat, that could spell disaster for all of them. All they needed was for the Argents to realize their charge was ill around them, and the pack might be forced out of town for something they couldn’t control, something they hadn’t even caused. Hell, if Kate were still alive, maybe that’s all it would take for another full-scale massacre. At least they had that going for them.

The darkness swamped the inside of the Jeep until they broke through the tree line and onto the main road back into town. Sure, the preserve was the best place for a werewolf to live, especially on his own property, but the drive out and back was murder on Stiles’ gas allowance.

“Am I dropping you off?”

Before he left for school, he actually managed to catch a glimpse of his father coming in from a late night at the office. He’d made sure the Sheriff knew there were pre-cooked, doctor-approved meals already prepared and packaged in the fridge and reassured him that he could make it one day in school without getting into trouble, but he’d neglected to ask if Scott could stay the night.

Their families were so close that asking ceased to be a prerequisite, but both Sheriff Stilinski and Melissa McCall were huge fans of courtesy. Asking before bringing. So far Stiles had done a good job on the asking part, but in his rush to get to school and talk to Danny, the issue had slipped his mind.

“Yeah.” Scott shifted in the seat to look at his best friend. “Think you can take me to Allison’s?”

Stiles nearly, _nearly_ slammed on the brakes. The jeep still lurched forward when he reapplied the gas, but God, his shoulder ached from the sharp snap back into the seat from the seat belt.

“You just got barfed on by Allison’s friend _and_ Derek explicitly told you not to go near her, and you still want to go to _Allison’s_? Dude, I know you’ve had some great luck this year, making first line and getting a date with the new girl and all, but seriously, you have to know this isn’t going to end well.”

No, not a trace of jealousy whatsoever. _At all_. Scott had good luck, and Stiles was just fine and dandy doing what he could to stay valuable to the group. Some nights the thought of being abandoned by his best friend kept him up through the morning before he could reassure himself that an entire childhood with the puppy-wolf outweighed pack-ties any day.

“I don’t have to be in the same room as her,” Scott tried to argue, flailing in a Stiles-like fashion. Ah, the obliviously reckless Scott everyone knew and loved.

“She lives with the Argents, Scott. Come _on_. You’ll be lucky if she’s not even the one who answers the door.”

The Jeep rolled through town on a streak of green lights without another word. Yay for late night driving! Thankfully Stiles’ logic was enough to dissuade Scott from doing something stupid. It was several more minutes until it rolled up onto Scott’s driveway with a loud rumble before he shut off the engine.

“Don’t be stupid, Scott. Just this once control your hormones, okay? Until we know what’s wrong with her, no one goes near her. Come on, buddy. Say it with me. Humor me. _Please_. Don’t leave a dude hanging.”

Scott groaned, but did it anyway, his eyes narrowed comically. “I’m not going near Allison’s friend.”

Stiles could have laughed. “Oh, no, you’re not getting out of this because of a technicality. Her name’s Aisling, I think. Aisling Jasper.”

Again with the eye rolling.

“I’m not going near Aisling Jasper. I promise. Okay, Stiles? Can you unlock the doors so I can go home now?”

Apparently that was good enough for Stiles because with a click, the locks popped open and Scott hopped out, being extra careful to close the door with more force than was necessary.

“Dude! Not cool!” the human shouted out the window after the werewolf before throwing the car into reverse and disappearing from Scott’s neighborhood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping for 20 hits/chapter before uploading, but I'm just going to go with weekly updates on Sunday, I think, with longer chapters compared to the first two.  
> So really slow going, and I'm sorry but at least there's more canon characters now.
> 
> Also, just be warned, I'm in Summer school, and one of my classes has a 10-15 page term paper.


	4. Dream Weaver

The heavy heat of the high noon sunlight baked the air inside the Camaro so much that even his ears strained to stay focused on listening for his wolves over the air conditioning. All right, so Stiles technically wasn’t a wolf, but he was pack as much as the real Betas, and all morning the kid had yet to make a move on Danny. The clock was ticking, and while they seemed to be ahead in terms of their dealings with the strange Argent family friend, the pack had suffered enough to know they needed the upper hand for as long as possible.

The two idiots should have already had several chances to talk to Allison, but he hadn’t heard them mention anything close to important beyond what the homework was. Apparently Scott had forgotten all about it by the time he finished cleaning the vomit off his shoes and pants so his mother wouldn’t worry.

At some point in time Stiles must have been doing something stupid because he soon rattled off several inane facts at an increasingly rapid pace until the teacher huffed and told him to stay quiet for the rest of the hour unless he wanted to go from benchwarmer to seatwarmer in detention after school. Derek groaned and slumped in the driver’s seat before he thought better of it and leaned the seat itself back. The leather crinkled in protest against the new position. He rarely used the feature unless driving to a real bed stopped being an option. Much better.

Derek fiddled with the controls to turn down the intensity of the air conditioning. His head must have been down, looking at the dials when another car pulled into the school parking lot, sliding into a space across behind his Camaro in the other row. A stocky, dark grey jeep-type deal. He grimaced. Only Argents felt a dire need to drive around in little rolling tanks with their special extra storage capabilities only a hunter could truly appreciate.

His hazel-green eyes tracked the movement of the shadowed figure in the driver’s seat through his rear view mirror. No long hair of any sort, all right, he could work with that. Definitely Chris Argent, but there hadn’t been anything worthy of suspicion in the school so far, and as far as Derek could tell, Allison’s little friend hadn’t come by either. There had been no trace of her scent around when he initially pulled in.

Argent messed around with some pack or a backpack of some sort in the passenger’s seat, much larger than a standard book bag all the students carried, before he pulled out a gun from deep inside it. He turned it around a couple of times in his hands, inspecting it maybe, but then he just put it back inside and finally exited the car, the lights blinking in answer to his pressing of the locks.

Unconsciously or not, Derek scooted further down in his seat to avoid being seen, but hell, he was practically the only person in town who owned and drove a Camaro and Argent probably knew that. Maybe if he was lucky, Argent wasn’t here for him. They’d had a truce for a while now after the . . . mess of events of the previous year, but the Argents hadn’t exactly proven themselves to be strict followers of the Code.

Well, fuck his luck.

Chris Argent rapped his knuckles again on the glass of his window, frowning, clearly impatient.

“You gonna open up sometime this year?” His voice was distorted through the window.

As tempting as it was to just crush the man’s throat there and then, Derek at least followed the Code, even if it was more for his own self-preservation than a bonafide moral obligation to uphold it. With a grunt, he let the barrier drop between them, his jaw set in a hard line as he turned his eyes upwards at the hunter, flashing red once in warning.

Knives tucked away in the hunter’s sleeves and covered by the ribbed cuffs of his socks were a real possibility, but Derek didn’t doubt he could hold his own long enough to get out of immediate danger if need be.

“What are you doing here? This is school property, and they don’t welcome loiterers.”

“You’re not the Sheriff. What does my being here matter to you?” Derek spoke in clipped, harsh tones, his eyes never leaving the hunter, constantly roaming over the other man’s figure for any sign of intent to strike.

“I had to treat my niece for a very severe reaction last night after she met your little pal McCall. I need to know what happened. Allison won’t talk, and Aisling isn’t in the state to.”

“Nothing happened. She was introduced to Scott, and she . . . reacted. That’s it.”

“McCall didn’t say anything else? Did he do anything that might have triggered her?” Chris pushed, his hands moving from leaning against the roof of Derek’s car to gripping the edge of the window opening.

Derek’s eyes glanced downwards at the man’s steadily whitening knuckles. Curious. Apparently both sides where rather in the dark about their mutual concerns. Then Argent’s choice of words struck him. For a hunter, the word ‘trigger’ wasn’t thrown so carelessly.

“ _Triggered_?”

For a fraction of a second, an expression curiously similar to a wince took hold of the hunter’s usually stony features.

The hunter’s head dropped between his arms and remained there for the better part of a minute before he clapped his hand once on the roof of the Camaro and moved away from the car.

Fuck, if he left a scratch up there . . . Derek fumed silently from behind the wheel.

“Forget it, Hale. Just keep your Betas away from my niece, and I won’t need to pursue this.”

The hunter’s strong legs carried him already halfway across the parking lot before Derek could get his window rolled back up completely. Well, if that didn’t qualify as cryptic, he didn’t know what would.

Besides, he hadn’t learned anything new from the brief encounter, and he hadn’t been given any orders he hadn’t already given to his Betas. They knew to stay away from Aisling and that meant Allison by extension until things cooled off. Even if Scott was too dumb to follow through with that particular order, he at least knew better than to push the issue.

Just what the hell was going on with the damn Argents? They just couldn’t leave well enough alone.

It was hours before the air conditioning was no longer necessary although Derek kept his windows open just a crack to keep the interior air breathable. The luxurious leather seats weren’t so luxurious as they were overpowering in the intense heat to his more acute sense of smell. That new car smell held hardly

* * *

School would be over soon, and he couldn’t risk staying any longer. He’d have to pay a visit to the Sheriff’s son before the Sheriff got home to make sure at least some progress was being made, but with the lateness of the hour and the uselessness of the whole morning, he was beginning to doubt they’d ever get any useful information.

The porch lights were already on by the time Stiles pulled into his driveway, his Jeep the only vehicle present on the entire block. That was a good sign. No Sheriff in the house tonight and no neighbors to judge him for bringing Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Moody to the front door.

“What do you mean I wasted a whole morning?”

Stiles couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Honestly, does no one ever appreciate the effort it takes just to stay sane when you have to remind yourself daily that your best friend is a werewolf, his girlfriend is a werewolf hunter, the wolf that bit him was killed and then came back to life, the love interest of your love interest was a mind-controlled giant lizard, and that you’re still the only normal human in the middle of it all?

Jesus, it takes a toll on a guy.

“You never asked Danny to get you into the police records.”

Thank you, Derek, for jumping to conclusions. Stiles looked at the Alpha blankly over his shoulder as he followed him up the stairs. This was a change of pace, actually letting the wolf in through the front door instead of just finding him in his bedroom already waiting for him. His books tumbled out his bag and dropped to the floor by the time he realized what the Alpha had just said.

“You were listening to me?” He pursed his lips, opened his mouth like he was about to protest again, and shut himself up with a hand over his mouth, rubbing his face vigorously. “I just- I can’t with you!”

“You and Scott, and the other Betas, yes,” Derek clarified as if nothing was particularly strange about listening to other people’s conversation _from the parking lot_. “I told you that I was going to take this seriously. Now you have to wait an entire day to find information. The Argents could already be organizing to remove us as a threat.”

“Okay, okay, now you just gotta do me a big favor. You with me?” Stiles asked, scrambling backwards until the back of his knees hit his chair and he was forced to sit.

Derek growled at the comment without having to face Stiles. He moved restlessly, almost like a real wolf, pacing up and down the length of the room, one arm folded across his chest while the other carded through his dark hair.

“I’m just going to take that as a _yes_. Now breathe. Come on, big guy. Breathe. In and out. And let Stiles do the talking.” The whole time he waved his arms toward and away from his body to imitate each breath, but Derek refused to participate. So be it.

“Like you do anything else.”

Oho, a joke from the Big Bad Wolf. Scott would never believe this.

“I heard that and I resent that notion. Because clearly while I _wasn’t_ talking all morning I passed notes instead,” Stiles announced smugly, his turn to fold his arms over his chest and fail at trying to lift a single eyebrow. Instead his eyebrows did a weird wavy dance until he gave up and settled for a Stilinski scowl.

“Like a fifth grader?”

_Okay, rude, much?_

“Do you want the information or not?” Exasperated, he dropped his arms to his sides to spin himself around and face his laptop, ready and waiting for a command.

“What do you have?”

“Well, I don’t have it _, per se_ ,” Stiles said cautiously, typing random nonsense into his browser search bar while he waited. “Danny has it.”

“Then this is still useless. I need it. Here. Now.”

“Hold your horses, for a second. Please. Jeez. He said he’d email it when he got home. Which should be soon. Or now. Now is good too. Look. Email notification. Technology. Yay! Stop being such a sour-wolf already.”

Clear as day, the little red flag with a 1 on it popped up on the envelope icon in the sidebar. One click revealed that Danny, the ever-happy-go-lucky, everyone’s-best-friend Danny Mahealani, had totally outdone himself and attached five files of varying sizes to a rather lengthy email. All Stiles had asked for was police records, anything about past misdemeanors or background checks for a job, really anything, and Danny provided.

Shit. Stiles was going to owe the dude a lot for work this extensive, even if it only took a better part of the afternoon. Danny deserved as much. While the hacker hardly required any time at all to access the files, hacking them at all carried a sizeable amount of risk with real juvenile detention time if, God forbid, he should get caught. Plus, big brains need burgers to fuel up. Hopefully Danny could settle for burgers because Stiles wasn’t about to pay him back in anything but burgers.

“So, what did he find?” Derek asked, getting uncomfortably close to Stiles, one hand propping him up on the back of Stiles’ chair, the other on the desk just beyond the mouse pad.

Stiles couldn’t help the silent, involuntary gulp at the closeness of the wolf. One shred of bad news, and those canines were within dangerously close range to his throat. For all his experience getting shoved against walls and other inanimate objects, few things hit higher on the fear scale than having a wolf behind him. Better hope for the best, then.

“Nothing,” Stiles muttered lowly after skimming the first few lines of the email’s text, his eyes scanning across the small, black-and-white lines across the screen. “At least nothing that stands out. She didn’t have much of a police record, not really a criminal one. Not officially, anyway.”

“What are all the files then?”

“Records of misdemeanors, you know, small things. She was a minor at the time, apparently, but, damn, Danny, still got into them. You do know how much he’s going to hold this over me, don’t you?”

Stiles looked over his shoulder for a second. No reaction. Of course. What was he expecting? He clicked through the first four files Danny had sent him. That’s it, then, just four documented and recorded misdemeanors and petty offences. She’d been booked three times for trespassing, but the charges on all of them were dropped because apparently she had been sleepwalking. Strange but not wholly unheard of.

That thought last about two seconds after he opened the first file with the sharp click of his mouse.

The first time was through a private golf course. Not the most impressive place to break into. Golf courses for all their sophistication were so large that security teams rarely checked the perimeter fence for holes more frequently than once a month. The manager found her standing in one of the water obstacles, only-knee deep, but dressed in her Sunday best, her hair neatly clipped back so that the curls framed her face.

Huh, Stiles’ first reaction after finding a strange kid standing in a private golf course would have been to take her out and get her some blankets and first aid. The police in charge of documenting the case took the time to take photographs first.

The small girl (only eight-years-old at the time) stared blankly into the camera when it was set up directly ahead of her. Her heavy brown curls were being tossed about by the wind that day, a few strands getting stuck to her pale pink, glossed lips. Something about her expression tugged at his heart. Her head was angled only slightly downwards, as if she were looking at something deep beneath the water, but the report didn’t note anything of significance beyond the odd stray golf ball. When they went to remove her from the pond, she didn’t move, or rather her body refused to, and they resorted to carrying her bodily into the waiting ambulance. Only when the nurse slipped the IV needle into the vein on the back of her hand did she finally react.

With not the barest idea of why she’d been taken to the hospital.

Okay, wow, he whistled when he finished the second one. Jackson had never once in the time they’d known each other, ever, ever mentioned the time his parents found the nine-year-old Aisling curled up in the corner of their “locked” tool shed. Poor Jackson must have been scared out of his wits when she attacked him out of “self-defense” for poking her away with those pool cleaning nets. Oh, man, if these weren’t supposed to be confidential files, Stiles would definitely lord the experience over Jackson at school tomorrow.

Then, the last time she was caught wandering around on the highway leading out of town, which wasn’t really trespassing, but at the time, that’s what they went with when they kept her in jail for the rest of the night. No wonder the charges were dropped, but her parents were still slapped with strict demands from the police department to get their daughter checked for a mental disorder or at least improve the home security to keep her _inside_ for once. They’d even had to sign off on it. And that was when she hit the nine-and-a-half mark.

Stiles honestly didn’t know what he’d been expecting for her fourth charge to be considering the fact that the other three had been due to sleepwalking.

Either way, neither he nor Derek could safely say they expected a work of graffiti as massive or as intricate as she’d managed, covering an entire side of the Old River Bridge on the south side of town where no one event went anymore. All the old mills that way ought to have been shut off for years before she defaced the connecting bridge. Something had drawn her there of all places, but that was far from being the weirdest thing about the case.

Over and over, as if possessed and Stiles was seriously beginning to lean toward that idea, she painted so many spirals onto the damp bridge’s surface that the paint of one spiral dripped and bled into the next. There were so many that they overlapped, and it might have been an indistinguishable pattern if not for the photo taken from a longer distance away. The concentration of spirals had been deliberate and created a dark enough band that from far away, the collage came together to form one, massive spiral, the bottom curve broken off from where the bridge housing met the water.

“Um, Derek, y-you have anything to say?” He waved his hand dramatically at the screen and almost laughed at how the motion made the shadows dance across Derek’s face like the scared kid who decided hiding behind an old-school wooden screen door was a good idea.

Said werewolf remained quiet and backed away from the desk, allowing Stiles to take in the breath he’d been dying to since he first opened the damn file.

“The spiral is the symbol for revenge, but it should be impossible for a human to draw one like that. Right?”

“Stiles, you remember what Peter did to Lydia, what he made her do?”

Stiles startled a little at the reminder, forcibly keeping himself turned away from the screen. “No, no, he has nothing to do with this. She was a kid, back then. Before anything happened, before the fire happened, and nothing in these files says she even knew your family.”

“You sure? Check the dates.”

A quick, cursory glance, and yeah, just like he’d said before. “She vandalized the bridge a month before the fire.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Peter wouldn’t have had any reason to control someone that early.”

Maybe it wasn’t Peter.

“What? You think it was another wolf? My family’s pack was strong and well known before the fire. There were no other wolves in Beacon Hills during that time. No omegas could come close without being found by one of us.”

“Shit, did I say that out loud? I mean, just think about it. It could be a possibility, right? What if whatever controlled her was outside your range? I mean, if they could control a human, maybe they wouldn’t need to actually go into your territory.”

“No. We would have known, and it still doesn’t mean anything. What would force a lone wolf to control a human and leave a mark for revenge? My mother kept our pack and all the neighboring packs in line.”

“I- I just- Jeez, Derek, I’m just trying to help, you know, brainstorm, word vomit. If anything sounds like it might be true, just stop me. I don’t want to put ideas into your head if you’ll actually believe them.”

Derek growled, fully facing Stiles now, with bright red eyes. “Then. Shut. Up!”

Stiles paled a little, and he definitely would never admit that he nearly pissed himself at the sudden outburst.

Slowly, the red faded, and Derek just slumped, literally slumped to the floor with his back and head leaning against the bedroom door. Even after nearly drowning from lizard venom paralysis, he hadn’t looked half as defeated as he did now.

“What about the last file?” he asked, his voice quiet and soft, as he raised his arm to cover his eyes.

“It’s nothing. Just a screenshot of what happens when you try to access a strictly classified , closed case file. Danny said her name is registering on it, that’s why he was able to find it, but other than that, he can’t get any information on the case itself, the date, the location, what even happened, nothing. Dude hit a brick wall. You need to physically go into the records room if you want to read it, and that’s not going to happen without a badge _and_ written approval. Because that is exactly the road block we could use right now.”

“Damn it,” Derek groaned, slamming his head back into the wood so loudly that even Stiles winced from his seat at the desk. “We need the hospital records. Even if we can’t access the police file, the hospital might have something on it. Has Scott gotten anything yet?”

“What, you weren’t listening in on _his_ conversations?”

“I’d rather not hear him whine about Allison 24/7, no,” Derek answered, uncovering his face just enough to glare out of one eye. “Besides, you were the one who strictly needed to speak to a classmate. This is his mother we’re talking about. My hearing is good, but not that good.”

“Dude, I know. Like, you could’ve stopped after the first sentence of your little … rant-thingy.” Stiles sighed, pulled out his phone, and sighed again, more distressed than the first time. “And no, he hasn’t been returning any of my calls or messages. I don’t know what more I can do from here.”

“Try him again. The sleepwalking was just the start, and the spiral obviously means something, even if it’s not through a direction connection with the fire.”

“I called him, like, twenty times in the last hour. I doubt he’s going to pick up all of a sudden.”

“Just do it, Stiles. They might have some record on what Argent said triggered her.”

“Wait, wait, wait, _what_?” Stiles asked. He rose to sit full height in his chair, his eyebrows drawn together in deep thought. “What? You met with Allison’s dad?”

“More like he met with me. It doesn’t matter.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“Apparently, she’s still sick from whatever happened with Scott, but the way he said it; he knew something like this could happen. He warned me to keep my Betas away from her.”

“Yeah, like you haven’t already drilled that into their heads,” Stiles laughed.

“Always good to know you at least _hear_ my orders. Now call him again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked that, all Derek today. What is this curious conundrum? Getting closer but no cigar just yet. You'll just have to wait til next Sunday.
> 
> AND OH MY GOD the Season 3 finale just made my story make a lot more sense chronologically instead of me having to pull something out of my ass. LIKE WOW THAT WORKED OUT PERFECTLY.


	5. This Is Their Design: Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What he wouldn’t give to make things right again. Go back to hunting wolves that were clearly a threat to society. Things had been simple then, clear cut. At least it worked up until Kate’s decision to massacre the Hale family just for being what they were and then his father’s grand plan to use the wolves’ venom and the corruption of the Kanima to counteract his own cancer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a really long chapter when I was writing it, so I split it into two parts. The second part will be posted tomorrow on the regular update day.  
> 

Every breath burned its way down her throat as if she were lost in the desert instead of confined to bed rest in the Argents’ home. Like clockwork, every two hours her uncle would come into the room, wash her face and arms with cool water, take her temperature, and wait with her until she finished a large glass of crisp, vitamin-packed water. It was strange to be so diligently cared for by a man who was usually no less than coarse in his dealings with her. For so long, she had only seen him in the context of his wife, but apparently that line of discussion was forbidden.

“Come on, Ash. Your father will skin me if anything happens to you.”

Gently, he pulled her upper body into a sitting position and tilted the glass against her pale, chapped lips. A few trickles escaped after she coughed from the fire in her throat, but she was able to finish the rest without issue. Weak and nauseated, she would have turned her head to look at him fully, but the wave of dizziness that resulted forced her to settle for watching him out of the corner of her eyes.

He was helpless to stop the rise of the corners of his lips when he noticed her watching him. It was the most alert she’d been since she passed out in the Allison’s car. That had been on Wednesday. It was now well into Friday night, and while Allison was out enjoying a party with her best friend in Beacon Hills, her father had taken up the task of caring for his niece.

“Wh-what happened to me,” she croaked after several stops and starts.

After wiping her face clean again and replacing a new, colder washcloth on her forehead, he finally answered her, choosing his words delicately. “Something about one of Allison’s friends must have triggered an anxiety attack. You passed out in the car when Allison tried to bring you home. She hasn’t told me anything about it. If you feel you’re up to it, can you tell me what happened? Anything you can remember, Ash.”

Struggling to keep the nausea at bay, she shook her head with the least amount of actual motion she could to get her point across. “Just smells, not food smells, but earthy, you know? I’ve only smelled it once before. I tried to remember, and then I wish I didn’t. I couldn’t breathe, and it felt like my heart wasn’t even beating. I don’t remember anything else.”

“What did you try to remember, Ash? I’m trying to protect you.”

“I don’t know,” she whimpered at the increase in volume. “The earth-smell was so strong. That’s it.”

When he realized that he was stressing her out, he pulled back and refocused his attention on dabbing at her exposed skin with the washcloth, anything to cool her off and break the fever faster. “I’m sorry. You know what, I’ll cook you some chicken noodle soup. It’ll make you feel better.”

“Pescatarian, Uncle Chris, remember? I’m like those annoying, little dogs rich ladies take to the kennels with dietary restrictions.”

At least she could still laugh at herself.

“Vegetable soup then. I want you out of that bed by tomorrow, understand?”

Aisling didn’t even bother to reply, or rather she couldn’t. She fell asleep before he could get his hand on the doorknob, all pasty and grey against the navy comforter and underling navy and white striped sheets.

Chris couldn’t fully remember the last time he’d ever seen her so sick. It was rare for her to even catch a cold, her immune system had always been strong, but her anxiety attacks took a real toll on her. She fell horribly ill each time and required coaching to get back on her feet. Through the nights, even if she couldn’t remember it, she needed to be instructed how to breathe to keep from hyperventilating while she was still too weak to get a rein on her thoughts. She would have opened the rear car doors during the drive home if Allison hadn’t locked it in time although it definitely helped that Aisling passed out immediately afterwards and didn’t have the strength to try again.

While the whole family understood that Aisling came with her share of triggers and night terrors, only Aisling’s father really knew how to care for her and keep her out of harm’s way. All of this, the constant worrying, the constant fear of what might happen if the truth got out, it was all new to Chris, and he far from enjoyed the responsibility.

He’d had enough to deal with in the past few months. He was supposed to be retired from all of this, but instead he had been forced to follow Derek to the high school parking lot and confront the Alpha himself. Sure, he’d been armed, but he hadn’t planned on seeing the werewolf until he really needed to. Jesus, he knew that Scott kid was trouble from the start, and now his niece was shivering in her sleep because she spent all of two seconds with the kid.

There were no such things as lucky breaks for the Argents apparently, and it frustrated him to no end.

On the bright side, Allison seemed to be faring remarkably well having been thrust into the life of a hunter so abruptly, but Argents were raised to be guarded with their emotions. She may be his daughter, but who really knew how she felt anymore? They’d both been through hell, and this episode of Aisling’s was proving to be the cherry on top.

Sipping at a now cold cup of coffee, Chris pulled up some old files on his laptop, skimming through the records for anomalies or notes or little additions that Greg might have added after he converted the documents to PDFs. Turned out there were several side notes from the man, none of them over-the-top helpful, but it provided a baseline of knowledge and a good many tips on encouraging faster recovery times after an anxiety attack.

Even the phone number to her Bixby therapist was still current. He knew from dialing and going straight to voicemail when he tried the direct line. He guessed that was one of the perks of being a frequent visitor to a small, private practice, no less. Calling her therapist though was a last ditch option though. Chris didn’t want to underestimate the care Aisling needed to survive a year in Beacon Hills, but she was still entitled to her privacy. No longer a minor, he wouldn’t have much sway in gaining access to her therapist’s notes anyway without tangible evidence.

Of course, none of that made it any easier to watch her fight through the fever.

After fixing the collar of his coat, he grabbed his keys off the kitchen table and decided that she was well enough to be alone for a couple of hours. In the meantime, he had some intel to gather.

* * *

Chris Argent looked incredibly out of place sitting in the McCall’s somewhat cramped living room. For a single mother working at the local hospital, she maintained a rather nice household, not as large as Chris’s, but it was more than impressive.

She’d allowed him inside with only minimal suspicion though he supposed it was just one of those things he’d have to deal with. Scott had caved and told her everything when he was forced to transform to protect his family, but Chris hadn’t known that everything would include him. No wonder Melissa McCall appeared so surprised to see him at the front door; he had tried on multiple occasions to kill her son, who was disappointedly but predictably late coming home.

“Can I get you anything to drink? Water? A beer? I’ve got some Coor’s in the fridge,” she offered, more to fill the silence than to play a good host.

“Water will be fine. Thank you.”

“I’ll just be a minute.”

She smiled nervously before heading back into the kitchen with quick, light steps, ducking around the various piles of shoes and lacrosse gear piled up on the square of hardwood in front of the doorway. The hardwood matched the flooring of the kitchen, but having long since kicked off her work shoes, her steps were still mostly muted.

“Any idea when he’s coming home? I need to speak with your son about an urgent matter,” he asked as delicately as he could when she passed him the glass.

Melissa fiddled with her nails across from him on the loveseat and toyed with a lock of her hair for a good deal before she raised her eyes to meet his. “Is this about the Jasper kid?”

He sat up a little straighter. “What do you know about it?”

“Scott wants her medical records from the hospital. He tried to be discreet about it, but I found him before he could access them. He couldn’t spell her name, I think.”

“Good. Those are private files, for family only. I just wanted to get your son’s side of the story about why she’s sick now.”

“She’s sick? But she hasn’t been admitted to the hospital. How serious is it?”

“She seemed to be improving before I left, but this isn’t a hospital issue.”

“Chris, she’s been admitted before for fevers.” She paused to explain herself when Chris raised a brow at her. Eager to help she leaned forward and clarified, “I checked her records after I sent Scott outside. Is she responding quickly when you try to wake her up? Have you regularly asked for her name, home address, things like that? Have you made sure she’s getting enough fluids? How long has she had the fever?”

“Ms. McCall, I know you’re a nurse, but she’s my niece and currently not your patient. She is responding well. She drinks at least one glass of water every two hours. I can’t get her to drink any more than that without her having to stop from nausea.”

“She needs to be in a hospital, Chris. An IV will help keep her hydrated, and we can have an ice bath ready in case she spikes.”

Chris hardened his features. “No. Aisling stays at my home until I hear from your son.”

The nurse frowned and sat back in her seat, folding her arms over her chest. “What, you don’t think he had anything to do with it, do you? Scott’s never even met her before.”

“You know what he is, Ms. McCall. You know what I do.”

“Are you threatening my family? In my own home?” she asked in a heated tone. Her eyes narrowed and she rose to her full height to get the full effect.

“I wasn’t trying to, no. I need you to understand that things like Scott can have unintended effects on certain people.”

Slowly, the realization dawned on her. “You mean, on Aisling Jasper? You think being around a werewolf caused her fever? Is that even possible?”

He held his hands apart to show that even he was at a loss. “Her father warned me that she could be triggered like this, but he didn’t give a clear cut list of triggers. Scott might have smelled something, but he’s not here to tell us.”

At least Melissa had the good graces to look guilty for her son’s tardiness. Obviously regardless of what caused the illness, Scott might actually be of some use, and he was still conspicuously missing. More than likely, he was with Stiles and Derek, but neither Melissa nor Chris was about to go out in search of the wolves themselves. Much better to wait for them to come home.

The rest of the night was spent in tense silence, neither speaking to keep from butting heads about their opposing backgrounds. No hunter could fully sympathize with the mother of a werewolf, and no mother of a werewolf would completely understand the quick-to-blame nature of a hunter and certainly not encourage it.

Only when Chris Argent stood to leave and nearly grabbed the doorknob did he come face to face with the prodigal wolf. He smiled sweetly at the teenager, welcoming him inside when the poor kid didn’t immediately come over the threshold.

Before he even had a chance to greet his mother in the living room, he was halted by a tight grip around his elbow.

“ _You_ stay right here. I have had to sit here with your mother while my niece is sick. You tell me _anything_ you remember, all right? Then you can go to your mother.”

Scott flapped his mouth open and closed multiple times, his eyes growing wide before squinting as he tried to understand exactly what a hunter was doing in his home, and still all he could manage was a feeble “ _What_?”

Plus, as luck would have it, his mother came out of the living room first and burst into action. She shoved Chris’s arm hard enough to break his grasp so that Scott could scramble farther into the house away from the armed Argent.

“Don’t you dare touch my son again. You understand?” she hissed at him with as much venom as she could put into her voice.

Scott shrank back behind her, somewhat at awe at the sight of his totally normal human mother standing up to a big bad wolf hunter.

“I have wasted over three hours waiting for him. No one’s been home to care for Aisling since I left.”

“It’s okay, Mr. Argent,” Scott muttered sheepishly, keeping his head down but his eyes focused on the man, a sign of submission without really having to bare the back of his neck completely. “Allison just dropped me off. She’s probably already back to your house by now.”

Chris inhaled deeply, shutting his eyes tight. “Call her. Tell her you’re not seeing her until Aisling is fully recovered. Please. Humor me.”

“You can’t police my son, Mr. Argent. I don’t care what you think he did, but he is my son. You _cannot_ order him around.”

Scott placed a hand on his mother’s shoulder and smiled softly down at her, the other hand already going for the phone in his pocket. “No, it’s okay, mom. Really, he just wants to talk, I’ll talk.”

The next few minutes were tense as Scott made the call, and from the way his sentences kept getting cut off, Allison was far from happy at the other end. Finally drawing a reluctant agreement from her for a temporary separation, Scott gave Chris a little half-smile that ended up as more of a wince. “There. You happy?”

Chris stared at the boy blankly. Of course he wouldn’t be happy. His niece was still stuck in bed.

“Tell me what happened. Every last detail. If something was in the parking lot to trigger her, you could have smelled it.”

* * *

Christ, dealing with wolves was just never going to be quite as fruitful as Chris had hoped. For all their heightened senses, their sanity seemed dependent on tuning certain things out, and in Scott’s case, he’d chosen to ignore scents for the large part of that day, something about teenage girls and perfume and boys with Axe or Old Spice body spray. He was going crazy by the time school finally let out so he really hadn’t noticed anything particularly off about Aisling until she was already bent over spewing out her previous meal in liquid form.

Only one thing struck him as odd.

“She smelled off. Not sick, or injured, just off, like she wasn’t totally human. I don’t know how to explain it. She smelled like glass, like some sort of mask over what her real scent was.”

After that admission, Chris left the McCall house with little more than a nod as a _thank you_ to Melissa for not kicking him out earlier.

Not even Allison’s assurances that Aisling was feeling much better upon her return could get her out of having to avoid Scott. Chris was just not in the mood for it.

Instead he just stormed into the silent master bedroom and slammed the door behind him. Maybe there was a way to make all of this work out, werewolves and hunters together, but his family had done too much damage to make it easy. Where Aisling fit in, he couldn’t say. She was human, but for one reason or another, she had had a reaction with the one werewolf that his daughter had to be attracted to.

What he wouldn’t give to make things right again. Go back to hunting wolves that were clearly a threat to society. Things had been simple then, clear cut. No Argent moved without concrete proof agreed upon by a council of no less than five persons. At least it worked up until Kate’s decision to massacre the Hale family just for being what they were and then his grandfather’s grand plan to use the wolves’ venom and the corruption of the Kanima to counteract his own cancer. From that point on, dealings were messy and tense at best.

Nothing was working as it should anymore. Only Allison’s grades were going well, so that was something to be positive about in spite of her werewolf boyfriend. But beyond that, moving to Beacon Hills was turning out more and more to be a huge mistake wrapped in a bombshell.


	6. This Is Their Design: Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her eyes were trained on the red spots with laser-like focus. She wasn’t going to budge this time. She had this one in the bag.  
> Or, you know, she did before whatever it was in the trees decided to let the ultimate freak flag fly.  
>  _It howled._

To be fair, Aisling no longer winced when she breathed in too deeply. Nor did she whimper when she turned her head to see who would enter the guest room next. Instead, she pushed herself up into a sitting position and flipped through the pages of a magazine, a hunting magazine no less, until she grew tired of it. Even on the summer days when she visited her cousin in the towns before Beacon Hills, she had never been much of a hunter, preferring to stay home when they went out into the woods.

Part of her reluctance came from being a pescatarian though even that stemmed from her aversion to most meat products. Where the meat came from and how it was produced mattered little to her. It never felt right or tasted right to her palette unless it was marinated so well that the sauce-to-meat ratio leaned heavily in favor of the sauce. Uncle Chris and Allison were both perfect shots with their weapons of choice so Aisling couldn’t find fault with their killing technique, always quick and painless, but being out in the woods, creeping over the tangle of roots, the scent of the earth piercing her nostrils with every step, everything melded together so powerfully that Aisling felt so at home among the trees that her stomach tied itself into knots at the thought of having to leave.

So, instead of facing the inevitable departure from the woods, she refused to enter in the first place.

The magazine felt gracelessly with a thwack onto the hard surface of the bedside table, startling Allison from her little nap on the rattan papasan chair at the food of the bed.

Groggily she wiped her eyes free of sleep and squinted at the sight of Aisling looking so alert.

“You know my dad didn’t believe me when I told him you looked better today?” she mumbled, drawing her body into a long stretch.

“Can’t imagine why. I was only bedridden with a fever for, what, two days.”

“You’re so lucky I’m all the way over here or I would punch you right now.”

Aisling laughed and stuck out her tongue. “I’m an invalid, weak! You wouldn’t pick on me.”

Allison had the good sense to pout at her before throwing her head back and giggling like an idiot. Her dad was upstairs trying to get some sleep before the next workday. The least she could do was keep moderately quiet.

“I so would. I would just feel a tiny bit guilty about it.”

“ _Pfft_ , please. Even you can’t be that heartless,” Aisling sneered. She then wiggled her toes under the covers just to make sure she could. Her whole body felt stiff from being kept still for so long. She flexed her hands, turning them round and round to admire the clear coat of her nails, long but not overly so. “See, you even touched up my nails while I was out!”

“Guilty as charged,” Allison admitted with a mock bow, still seated comfortably, her dark hair making a mess of itself when she tried to brush it back out of her face. “So, you feel as good as you look?”

“Don’t make me answer that, Allie. I haven’t showered or changed in two days. I probably look disgusting. I feel — clearer, lighter, you know? No hint of a fever at all.”

“Good enough to meet my boyfriend without puking on him?” Allison grinned at her wickedly.

All Aisling could do was wince and throw a glare the younger girl’s way. “I wouldn’t push my luck if I were you, but I could definitely go out into town tomorrow if Uncle Chris will let me.”

Allison nodded and stood to leave, a hand on the doorknob before she turned with a mocking glare. “As long as you’re armed.”

Long after the door shut behind her, Aisling’s face was still stuck in a pathetic pout. While she didn’t believe Uncle Chris would force her to carry a concealed weapon, she wouldn’t put it past him to try. With him, it had always been “better safe than sorry” as if safety was only a dream and prevention was the best medicine — or protection in this case.

Even as a child, when her memories of her birthdays still evaded her fleeting attempts at recollection, her mother made a point of stressing that she was never to be vulnerable in public. No going out to play in the schoolyard without a pocketknife clipped to her belt loop.

Now that it would have been foolish to expect an improvement as she grew older, the expectation that she would only run with a heavy, locked-position hunting knife strapped to her thigh had seemed a little strange for a small suburban family like hers. Yet she went along with it, if only to stop her parents from worrying.

Uncle Chris was not likely to vary from her parents’ wishes. He hadn’t disappointed so far. Even though his day job couldn’t have spared him for as long a time as he’d spent with her the past two days, he stayed with her, carefully monitoring her symptoms as per her mother’s instructions. Candice had long ago implemented a series of rules to follow in the event of an attack. Everyone knew about it, all her teachers, doctors, friends’ parents even on those rare occasions that she had friends, anyone she might spend more than four hours with, though Aisling suspected that only Uncle Chris and Aunt Kate got the full extent of the list. Some things listed there were too specific, and dramatic really, to pass around to just anyone.

Enough of that.

Aisling moved over to the window, her feet wavering only slightly beneath her. The glass pane of the windows chilled her fingertips when she reached over to flip the latch. For a brief moment the harsh bite of the cold reminded her of the fact that she had been viciously ill little more than four hours ago.

But the air also reminded her of something else.

Earth after rain. Pine scents and mountain springs.

Her knuckles whitened against the window sill.

Two spots of red glimmered just beyond the hedge surrounding the property. She hissed out a breath between her teeth. Her heart beat a severe rhythm against the inside of her ribcage.

Dammit, all she wanted was some fresh air.

Her eyes were trained on the red spots with laser-like focus. She wasn’t going to budge this time. Most of that came from the fact that Allison was in her room and couldn’t break her concentration. But at any rate, she had this one in the bag.

Or, you know, she did before whatever it was in the trees decided to let the ultimate freak flag fly.

It howled.

Whatever it was, it _howled_ like some vicious demon animal, and by god if that wasn’t the freakiest thing ever.

Long story short, Aisling budged. She budged very fast.

She practically leapt out of her skin and flew right across the room, pulled in the windows with a slam that was likely loud enough to wake Uncle Chris, flipped back the latch, and burrowed deep underneath the ridiculous nautical-themed covers.

There are no wolves in California. None. Aisling looked it up before she came to Beacon Hills, or you know, on the drive over. It was all a very last minute affair in her defense.

So whatever it was that decided to camp outside her window and _howl_ was not a wolf. It couldn’t be. Besides, what would the _only_ wolf in California want to do with her?

That train of thinking pushed her to the only logical explanation she could come up with.

If the “wolf” wasn’t here for her, it had to be here for _Allison_.

Because no animal in its right mind would come for Chris Argent. Right?

* * *

The moonlight filtered through the mess of dead and entangled branches of the pale wooded tree outside Scott’s window. It was a fire hazard really, having something that dead so close to the house, but with how things had been going lately, he just didn’t have the time to deal with it. There was just too much weighing him down to think of anything that could be considered normal.

Scott’s life was very much centered around the supernatural.

His face appeared grotesque in the bright white-blue light of his phone screen as he dialed his best friend’s number. The shadows shifted when he brought it to his ear.

The first words on the other end of the line came as a garbled, groggy mess of nonsense.

“Stiles, I know what she is. She’s a werewolf. She has to be. Why else would Allison’s dad ask Derek personally to keep his Betas away from her.”

Immediately, all thoughts of sleep flew out the window. Scott could imagine Stiles flailing his way out of bed and into his signature plaid jacket, free hand fumbling to grab his keys and make the drive over.

“ _What_? I mean, it makes sense, but Derek saw her too. He would’ve been able to smell it on her, raise a red flag or something.”

Even as Stiles climbed into the front seat of the Jeep, he couldn’t get the image of the red spray paint spiral out of his mind. That was a purely werewolf symbol for revenge. The pieces fit.

“She didn’t smell human, but she didn’t smell like a wolf either. I only figured it out because when I told Allison’s dad about her smelling weird, he left. Like that was the final straw. She has to be a werewolf, only she doesn’t know it yet.”

“You dressed, buddy?” Stiles asked breathlessly as he pulled a particularly sharp corner somewhere between his house and Scott’s. “We’re going to see Derek. Now.”

* * *

It was a first, seeing Peter standing at the entrance to the depot. For a guy who had his own flat, he spent more time than was appropriate crashing with his nephew.

“We know,” he said plainly and without a trace of his usual lecherousness or creepiness.

It was a relief, seeing Derek standing in the living area over the coffee table with photos of all four of Aisling’s counts of sleepwalking spread out in front of him, including the one that left a bridge defaced with a wolfy spiral. At least he appeared to have figured it out himself.

“So, if you know she’s a werewolf, do you also know that she doesn’t know,” Stiles asked purposefully obtuse before he threw himself lazily across the length of the couch. The springs groaned only slightly, and he counted that as a win.

“I bit her, but her mother sent her away so quickly I never knew if it took,” Peter admitted. For once, his eyes weren’t laughing or mocking but filled with an out-of-place misery.

“You bit her? Laura was the Alpha after the fire. I thought Betas couldn’t turn people.”

“I was Alpha, even if only for a moment. Laura hadn’t claimed the Alpha mantle yet, so to speak. After Derek’s parents, I was the oldest and only wolf left alive in that house. I had limited power as an Alpha, so much of it was going into keeping myself alive in the fire, but Aisling was only human. I gave her the bite and whatever happened after that was lost to me. I was comatose and she had disappeared.”

“You bit a human? Gosh, I don’t know how I didn’t see that coming,” Stiles mocked.

“I bit an _Argent_ , Stilinski,” Peter corrected him with a growl before he shoved through the front door so forcefully that the doorknob left a noticeable dent in the wall in spite of the little plastic guard.

“You don’t know when to shut up, do you?”

Jeez, even Derek was on Peter’s side today.

“What? Am I supposed to feel sorry for the guy? He’s the reason Aisling keeps getting sick.”

Derek groaned and shut his eyes tightly, one hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“ _Stiles_ ,” he ground out. “If Peter had had his way, Aisling would never have gotten sick in the first place. She never would have left Beacon Hills, and she would have been strong. Only by the time he woke up, as you’ll remember, there were no Argents in Beacon Hills, no Jasper family, and no Aisling. Her family is the reason she’s sick. It’s because of their hate for us that she’s weak. Resisting the change goes against everything we’re taught as kids. You embrace the wolf. You don’t fear it.”

“Peter never told you what he did, did he? He never told anyone that he bit her,” Scott murmured.

“No. He only told me today because I showed him the photo of the spiral she painted. He brought Laura here to kill her. Kate Argent destroyed Laura’s body to bring me here. But something else brought her here, probably whatever made her draw the spiral.”

“She’s here because she was hit by a car.”

“Was she? Her mother had her trained to forget about the fire? What’s one more round of therapy?”

Stiles shut up promptly. His eyes flicked back and forth between Scott and the Alpha between them.

“Where do we go from here then? We can’t just go up to her and expect her to believe we’re not all psycho.”

“That’s exactly what _I’m_ going to do,” Peter announced.

Honestly, Stiles couldn’t understand how werewolves managed to do that, appear out of nowhere at just the right moment in the conversation. It was majorly unfair.

“You aren’t going to do anything,” Derek snarled in his best Alpha voice, eyes flashing red to match.

Peter didn’t back down even the slightest, just smirked like his usual self-satisfied self, flicked his lightweight grey scarf back over his shoulder, and sat poised like a king in the armchair by the window.

“I’m her maker. Projecting onto her won’t be difficult. You remember Scott how I could tweak your emotions _just so_.” He made a gesture like twisting an imaginary dial. “I can do the same with her, but only just enough to keep her stomach contents inside.”

Immediately Stiles objected. “You just declared your hate for the Argents’ methods of brainwashing, and you’re about to do the same thing. No, no, just, no. You’re not going near her. I’ll tell my dad someone’s planning on harming her. I’ll have her put under a protective detail.”

Peter threw him a scathing look. “It’s not that perverse, Stilinski. It will keep her wolf calm enough to be in the same room as me. I will do it in a public place with plenty of witnesses and cameras. She’ll be perfectly safe from whatever you think _I_ would do to her.”

“Derek, you can’t let him walk all over you like this. Be the Alpha already!”

The young wolf huffed and leaned back against the wall. “He says he won’t hurt her. I believe him. He chose to save her over the family. Peter will keep her alive.”

“Good. Then we’re done here?” Peter clapped his hands and rubbed them together.

Just like an evil villain, Stiles mused.

“Stiles, take Scott home and get some rest. You’re both running with the pack tomorrow. Isaac said you have a practice match coming up.”

Soccer-mom Derek was much more authoritative than Alpha-wolf Derek; it was weird.

The way Derek said that Peter chose Aisling felt wounded, like a betrayal almost. Stiles could get that. Obviously, if forced to choose, he would save his dad over some killer’s niece any day. Yet, for whatever reason, Peter saved the only human boasting a hunter’s heritage.

Whatever Peter told Derek before they arrived, Stiles wanted to find out. He _had_ to find out.

After everything that had happened, after all the pain that Peter had put Derek through, Derek still defended him. He still believed that Peter would have made good on his offer to ease Aisling through the transition. He still believed that Peter wouldn’t harm her even if he openly admitting he’d be “tweaking her emotions.”

This whole situation was beyond messed up, and the girl at the center of everything was oblivious to it all. No, she was blinded to it and NOT by her own design.

She was a metaphorical little pony whose parents were the metaphorical handlers who put metaphorical blinkers on her and blocked out the truth about the fire and the truth about why she survived it.

A cute little vomit-spewing pony with werewolf hunters for handlers because wasn’t that just what Stiles needed to make his life that much more interesting?

Scott was out like a light the moment he got home, his hand still loosely curled around his phone. The screen faded to black, still open to the last text from Allison.

Derek stayed up through the night, photo of the spiral still in hand, with the copied police files about the Hale House Fire strewn across the table. Something made her draw it before the fire even happened, before she was ever a werewolf. Whatever it was, it had to be responsible for bringing her back now. The tidbits of information that Peter painfully and reluctantly pulled from his own mind had only brought up more questions. Betas’ bites didn’t turn people, and Peter couldn’t have been an Alpha. He wouldn’t have had to kill Laura if he’d been one. One fight, one confrontation could have sealed the power inside him. Eventually, frustrated, he relented the useless study and shut the power down, relying on his wolf’s eyes and the weak moonlight to lead the way back to the makeshift bedroom.

Stiles didn’t sleep at all. His mind was caught in the web of conspiracies that was Aisling. There was just no knowing where her real memories started or stopped or were modified as long as she was still being forced into therapy. She didn’t seem to be enrolled in any program in Beacon Hills. According to a quick search from Danny though, even as a non-student, she had asked to meet with Ms. Morrell, the school counselor. Obviously, that couldn’t be allowed to happen. One more therapist could be one less memory they had access to. Although speaking from personal experience, Ms. Morrell

This was not how any of them had expected to spend their week.

This was supposed to be relaxing. No more Kanima. No more Gerard. No more crazy people trying to set other people on fire.

Of course Fate would throw them another curveball.

Stiles pitied though. Aisling had never done anything to deserve the amount of mindfuck that she had been put through. No one ever deserved that degree of manipulation, but her mother and her aunt had both played key roles in it.

He could see where they were coming from. Obviously hunter families couldn’t deal with the bad press of having a werewolf in the family so the next obvious choice was to either kill the wolf or to hide it. So the hid it, made her forget it, made her repress everything the wolf would have given her. Only, the way Peter and Derek talked about it, repressing the change for so long might still kill her anyway.

And all because one woman couldn’t even live by her family’s own code.

_We hunt those who hunt us_.

His mind brought him back to Allison. How much of Aisling’s situation did she know? Allison treated Kate like a sister; her death had been devastating. No, no, he slapped a hand over his eyes tiredly. As crazy as Allison went after Kate’s death, she wasn’t crazy enough to be a part of this. She couldn’t have been. Ten year olds want ice cream, not the unnecessarily cruel deaths of the harmless supernatural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all you get for updates this weekend. See you next Sunday!


	7. When the Bough Breaks...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Did you know there was an opening at the sheriff’s office? My dad didn’t tell me about it, but let’s just say I skimmed over a couple of the applications. You’ve definitely got the skills for it, if half of what Allison says is true. Something about being ... _deadly_ within arms’ reach.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is another two-parter, but is less dependent on immediate continuity so that's coming next Sunday.

“Shit. I’m sorry. Oh my, Jesus Christ, how are you not screaming? I just spilled half a cup of steaming water all over you,” she apologized profusely even as she patted his shirt and jacket front with napkins, her hands trembling as she tried to help with as little actual contact as possible.

How could her morning get any worse?

Aisling supposed it started when she decided to have tea instead of coffee at the café on the corner since she was finally released from questionably-permanent bed rest. Her dad had tested her for allergies and the lot when she was little, and apparently they didn’t have anything in stock that was manufactured to suit her needs. That left her with the only option of scraping by with lemon wedges and honey, which they had in healthy supply. At least the barista was nice enough to only charge her for the four packets of honey since she opted for the sit-in-mug.

Her morning probably would have been fine if she hadn’t looked down to read the labeling on the honey packets while she weaved her way through the tables back to her seat in the corner of the quaint little shop. If her eyes had been up and focused, she might have actually managed to see the well-dressed older guy heading straight for her in time to dodge out of his path.

But no, she crashed straight into him, spilled the majority of her hot water on _him_ no less, and proceeded to launch into a barrage of apologies while she and another barista rushed to mop up the spreading mess on the floor.

Even after the puddle was cleaned up and marked for everyone’s convenience with a large plastic yellow caution sign, Aisling still couldn’t quite express just how sorry she was for no doubt burning the hell out of the guy, who still hadn’t said anything though the expression on his face was far from the I’m-so-pissed-I-could-kill-you-right-now-if-there-weren’t-so-many-witnesses look that she’d been expecting.

Blushing profusely, Aisling finally gave up trying to dry off the poor guy and forced herself to look him in the eye.

She was struck by a wave of familiarity when her muddy brown eyes met with sharp hazel, more green than brown. He was a total stranger, or should have been, but she couldn’t place where she’d seen his face before.

Spilling hot water on the guy did something to his cologne though, made it stronger. That too seemed familiar, but she could only remember the smell from Scott in her admittedly brief encounter with the kid. The earthy undertones grew sharp, stinging her nostrils, even through the mixture of coffee-related smells permeating the air around them.

He wasn’t a bad-looking guy, sodden clothes aside, from the light stubble/goatee deal he had going for him to the strong confident air he put off, even in his current state. The guy even dressed well, a deep-cut V-neck tee drenched as it was, though Aisling really couldn’t tell if it was a deep cut or just looked that way because of his muscles. For an older guy, he definitely hadn’t let himself go, but Jesus, enough of that.

“Shit,” she cursed to herself, but the corners of his lips twitched upwards as if he’d somehow caught it.

Aisling was about to excuse herself when he suddenly spoke up, his voice soft but not without a chilling dose of creepy. Okay, all attractive qualities null and void as of now.

“It’s no problem. Please, no more apologies.”

Before she could stop herself from inviting the creep to her table, she argued, “But you have to at least let me make it up to you.”

Oh my God, if that wasn’t an innuendo-ridden statement she didn’t know what was. Really, she was just digging herself a grave now.

“Actually I should be the one making it up to you. If it weren’t for me, you’d still have enough water for your tea. Let me get you another cup, and we’ll call it even, all right?”

“N-no, dude, you don’t have to do that,” she whisper-shouted at him to avoid from attracting even more attention to herself when she finally got back to her corner seat. Her hands shook as she tried to control the headache pounding with every beat of her heart. “Just, here, it’s a clean towel. I don’t know why I didn’t remember it sooner. I have a spare shirt too, but I, uh, I don’t think it would fit you.”

One corner of his lips rose slowly into a stupid smirk that frightened her a little. _Only_ a little.

He accepted the towel, wiping himself down with careful, deliberate strokes. He still kept silent about his name though Aisling should have expected as much. She hadn’t been forthcoming with hers either, but the way he dabbed the water off the exposed portion of his chest was just weirding her out to the max.

“You know, you remind me of someone, your speech pattern more than your mannerisms,” he finally offered when he was finished with the towel. Instead of handing it back immediately, he looped it around his shoulders, the bright turquoise fabric standing out against the charcoal and slate greys of his coat and shirt.

Her eyes were focused on the towel though instead of the words. That was a decent towel, and honestly the thought of having to meet him again if he decided to do her the courtesy of washing it himself made her throat constrict.

She must have been too silent for too long because he soon spoke again, leaning towards her just enough to get to her eye level. “He’s definitely much more talkative than you. So, if you’d rather skip out on another cup, I’ll just take this with me and wash it.”

Her heart sank. She could have sworn she heard it dropping into her stomach.

“Will that be all right with you?”

If she were anyone else, anyone with maybe a sense of knowing how to handle these sorts of situations, she would have known better than to lie.

“Yeah, yeah, that should be fine.”

And the little blip of her heart beat hardly went unnoticed.

* * *

As far as first meetings go, Aisling considered herself lucky. She hadn’t been hit on automatically (though that was a rare thing in and of itself), she hadn’t been murdered (also unlikely but probably less so), and she hadn’t burned herself with the boiling water.

To be fair, anyone hit with that much boiling water should have been on the ground in pain. Hours of scanning through Yahoo answers, etc. had told her that much. Boiling water was nothing to mess with, but apparently to Mr. Stranger Danger it was nothing more than lukewarm.

Literally. He’d told her as much via text message.

Also something she should have known better than to do. Giving her number to a perfect stranger should have seemed like a bad idea, and in hindsight, that stupid turquoise towel was not worth the discomfort of the idea of having to meet him again to retrieve it. Of course, when he presented his stupid little argument to remove her doubts (something along the lines of “We’re not strangers if we know each other’s names. It’s Peter.”), she’d been dumb enough to go along with it anyway.

Neither Allison nor Uncle Chris knew anything of the strange encounter. All the better for Aisling’s sanity.

Even if a second bout of fever had been dodged, sleep still evaded her at every opportunity.

For more than three days, the Earth-smell remained strong, and her initial meeting with Peter had only served to emphasize her restlessness. Even if it hadn’t felt nearly as disarming as it had with Scott.

Every night since she arrived at Beacon Hills, she would dream as she used to when the move to Bixby had still been new to her.

Dr. Carroway hadn’t accepted the referral to be her new therapist until about a month before Christmas. In the time in between, Aisling had been left to suffer alone the mind-numbing pain that wracked her body each night. Usually her mother kept her on powerful sedatives on particularly painful nights for the immediate first weeks following the move, but her body developed a tolerance sooner than either of them would have liked.

Not once had she been taken to a hospital when her body was forced into a searing backwards bend from the white-hot spikes piercing her muscles. Back then, her mother assured her that the pain came from the night terrors. Assured being a more generous phrasing, of course.

But night terrors meant you were dreaming, and Aisling never slept.

Now that the dreams were returning, she doubted she would ever get her strength back before the weekend.

For once she actually dreaded the coming weekend.

Peter the Master Creep had arranged for a meet at the local park on Sunday, an innocuous place if taken for face value, but anyplace that he suggested was bound to be a death trap or something just as dangerous. Aisling hadn’t felt her hair stand on end when she met him like that day at Allison’s school, so he didn’t necessarily feel like a raving psychopath, but something about his mannerisms put her on edge.

That word. _Mannerisms_.

What had he said about her exactly?

That’s right, something about reminding him of someone, a boy probably if she absolutely had to guess. No one spoke that mockingly about a full-grown man, although someone like Peter might be inclined to. She couldn’t rule it out entirely. Her head ached just thinking about it. All the things her father told her when she was a kid, don’t judge someone until you get to know them. Well, she judged Peter fairly harshly for having known him for only a day, but her gut rarely led her astray. This was _all_ justified.

With a groan she shut her eyes for the barest moment to breathe her mind into a calmer space. Just another therapeutic parlour trick.

The room differed drastically when she next reopened them, calmer than before. The scents all around her danced like vibrantly colored puffs of mist in the breeze coming through the opened window. She felt high almost, giddy if nothing else, being able to relax like this.

Ignoring all else, it was difficult to refocus her mind again.

A job might be a better way of spending her time in Beacon Hills than moping around in bed all day. Regardless of her poor health, a year in such a small town would be a disaster without some sort of routine to keep to. Allison had her school stuff demanding at least a part of the time, but Aisling so far had been confined to bed rest with nothing but hunting magazines for entertainment.

That was before she noticed the newspaper at the bottom of the heap of magazines. Sliding her legs over the edge of the bed, she knelt down to retrieve it, her slender fingers gently flicking through the headings until she reached the Classifieds.

Oh, the good old Classifieds.

Her laptop was still in her bag where it had been since she moved in. Catching a fever hadn’t put her in the mood to unpack just yet.

Brown eyes scanned through the first few listings, none of them quite catching her eye. The few that did demanded quite a number of qualifications that she honestly didn’t possess.

The pay per hour wasn’t so much a deciding factor as a happy bonus. Uncle Chris had made himself clear that he would foot the bill for anything she needed because she was “the guest.” Still, the meager offerings of an unpaid internship in a field she hadn’t even considered hardly seemed like the proper investment of her time. Or the would-be employer’s. Really, it would be a waste to hire her.

Except for a couple that stood out in particular. Private security being one of them. She hummed appreciatively and drew a thick red circle around both entries with a fat marker she lifted from the study desk. Now that was a field her mother would probably hate her for. Honestly, only retired cops too fat or too old to pursue homicides or the real problems in society went into private security, according to Candice.

Better yet, the opening required skills that Aisling definitely possessed. The entry lacked details about location for sure, but they weren’t explicitly asking for anyone with previous experience in security. Instead, they asked for special skills.

Summers with Uncle Chris and Aunt Victoria (and even Aunt Kate) had endowed her with beyond special skills. Allison could attest to that, having been her sparring partner. While the younger girl had a clear preference for archery and a frightening talent for knives, Aisling used her greater speed to her advantage. Rather than using a slashing and maiming technique, she went for a close-range mixture of sharp jabs with spiked knuckle rings and her favorite finishing move of her right hand around the throat. She had a special two-piece set of nail rings made for her index finger and thumb that gave her that little extra bite of sharp steel.

Actually, that last part might not be appropriate for private security. Normal hand-to-hand combat definitely came off as safer and less psychotic.

Calling in the morning would be her first priority if they were still hiring at all, but if not, that left her a second option, taking an unpaid internship with the police.

It was an interesting choice and less life-important-career-choice-y by nature than an internship with a chemical company. Back when she was a kid, she used to know one of the policemen by name just because he had such an odd one. _Stilinski_. It sounded so weird to her at the time, but he just smiled and dropped his hat on her head and pointed out her given name was hardly commonplace either.

Aisling smiled pensively at the thought. She ought to call the police office sometime and check if he was still around though Allison _did_ have a friend named Stiles (of all the nicknames he could have gone with and he goes for that). It would probably be faster and cause less hassle if she got his number from Allison. Obviously she would still have her same degree of awkwardness considering she doubted Allison would have given her number to the kid after the way they met.

* * *

Once her stomach was near to bursting, Aisling slid her legs out from under the table with surprising grace, moving her body sinuously around the back of the chair, all her dishes balanced carefully in her hands and one in the crook of her elbow. She set them all down in the sink so gently they never made a sound. She drew her lower lip into her mouth and forced herself to speak.

“So, you ever going to tell me why I haven’t seen your mother all week? I know the woman hates me almost as much as Aunt Kate, but she doesn’t hate me enough to purposely remove herself from her own home.”

Allison stilled noticeably beside her, though the bottom of her drinking glass clinked a strange beat against the metal basin. When she laughed, the sound was hollow, and the smile on her face didn’t quite bring out the dimples that Aisling associated with authenticity.

“Yeah, Mom never hated you as much as Kate.”

That fake smile was only making Aisling wince.

“You don’t have to tell me anything. Just know that I’m here, okay? I don’t know what happened since I’ve been gone, even less since the accident, but I want to know eventually if it’s _this_ painful for you.”

Oh, this was new. Any other time, Allison would have been the one comforting her. Having anxiety attacks kind of brings out that side in anyone close to her, but to be the one Allison leaned on now, not exactly Aisling’s area of expertise.

Awkwardly, she patted the younger girl on the back reminiscent of burping a baby until Allison calmed down enough to pull away and dab at her eyes with the backs of her fingers. Not a stray streak of mascara now.

“Thanks, Ash, it’s just, I’m still trying to resolve some issues with what happened.”

“Does that mean you’re going to tell me?” Aisling nudged her cousin with her shoulder gently, keeping her eyes downcast.

“Animal attack. There’d been a whole string of them recently. Guess we never thought it could happen to us too.”

The bitterness in her voice struck Aisling as off character, but then again, having been away for ages has a way of doing that to people.

“Yeah, you Argents with all your knives and hunting skills, that must have been a wake-up call,” Aisling muttered darkly.

“You can say that again.”

Together, they slumped shoulder-to-shoulder down to the floor with their backs against the under-the-sink cabinets. The cold tiles did help fight back the rush of blood to Aisling’s cheeks if only marginally. She felt so very near to tears.

The Argents were a strong family. Aisling’s family was only a weaker offshoot. It would have been more than understandable for Aisling’s family to fall victim to an animal attack, but Allison’s mother? That woman was a beast in her own right, and more than once, Aisling wouldn’t have had any trouble believing she could tear through the throat of a charging bull if she put her mind to it. Victoria Argent was just that tough.

Aisling’s eyes slid over to the withdrawn huntress beside her, sitting with her legs outstretched, clad in black lace-patterned tights and topped off with a pair of sick combat boot-style wedges. At least Allison still put on a show of being strong, but Aisling could practically feel the anger boiling inside of the girl. Anger that felt way too focused to be brought on by a random attack.

Her pupils dilated suddenly as the thought hit her like a bag of bricks.

The howling in the night.

Victoria Argent hadn’t been caught in a run-of-the-mill animal attack. It had to be a _wolf_ attack. It just _had_ to.

Shit, shit, double shit. If it really had been here for Allison, the stupid beast must have some weird vendetta against Allison’s family.

Oh, god, what if it was here to finish them all off? Damn, would it see the difference between cousins and immediate family and spare Aisling?

_No, no, that is selfish thinking and stupid thinking_ , Aisling chastised herself.

She’d come to Beacon Hills with a lengthy record of her own issues and Uncle Chris had welcomed her with open arms (okay, obviously not literally because she went to Allison the second she arrived). The least she could do was protect them in return with her meager defense skills.

That security job was looking awful tempting now.

“Ash? Are you okay? I’ve been trying to get your attention for at least a minute now?”

Aisling’s eyes refocused on the hand waving in front of her. Since when had Allison changed position?

“I was going to invite you over to the station with me. Stiles wants to surprise his dad with a stuffed chicken breast.”

“A surprise dinner? What’s the occasion?” Aisling chuckled as she stood, using a hand on the edge of the sink to steady herself.

Allison tapped the side of her nose. “Not my place to say. So, that’s a yes, then? You’re coming? Because we’re leaving now.”

“What? I haven’t even changed!”

“You look fine in your penguin pajamas.”

Needless to say, by the time Aisling slid into the backseat (because Stiles called shotgun via text apparently), her nerves slowly shrank the car to a less than comfortable size. Her foot tapped relentlessly on the floor of the car, and her eyes constantly switched from scanning the scene outside one window to the next.

They couldn’t have reached Stiles soon enough.

Not at his house apparently but at Scott’s.

Her throat tightened involuntarily.

“Hey, Allison! Aisling, Scott’s still up the driveway at his house, but he’s going to sit in the back with you, if that’s okay?” Stiles muttered nervously but quickly, one hand rising to scratch (or ruffle?) his buzz cut.

His movements were stiffer somehow. His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, and the nervousness in his voice felt less like it had to do with another vomit incident and more like it had to do with Aisling just being Aisling. The expression on his face was closer to wary than disgusted.

She nodded stiffly. “I’m okay with it, I think.”

“Try to focus on something else, like a smell. It helps me sometimes when I get . . . you know what, I’ll go get Scott.”

Aisling’s lips tightened and her brows knit together. That sounded an awful lot like personal experience, but not his own. His eyes were too busy avoiding hers for it to be.

“Thank you, Stiles,” Allison called after him.

But the boy was already dashing towards the front door, his arms flailing comically before he slammed into his best friend. Scott staggered a little, almost catching his heel on the metal threshold.

Aisling shrank back further into her seat, pushing herself as far against the door as she could. Dark brown eyes shot her way and the smile on his face dimmed. Only slightly but it was noticeable enough. What did they have against her? Aisling had never meant to make such a bad first impression, but now it seemed like it would be the only impression she’d ever leave.

Allison watched her through the rear view mirror. “It’ll be a quick ride, I promise.”

When Aisling next had a computer in her hands, she would have to search for the dictionary definition of “a quick ride” because that was most definitely _not_ it.

On the bright side, Scott hadn’t been subjected to another bath of her stomach contents though the fact that he also managed to squeeze himself against the opposite door helped to put him at a distance just far enough away from a projectile launch of said contents. He kept scanning her out of the corner of his eye. It unsettled her, but it would unsettle her more to draw attention to it in a small area as the outsider looking in.

His smell from their first meeting had lessened since then, which was no cause for complaint. He still smelled strongly of the earth beyond a normal boy smell, but the severity had dropped off to a bearable plateau. Aisling could actually sit in the same car with him and keep her mind trained on listening on their conversation.

“So, Ash,” Stiles started.

Obviously, the choice to either listen in or contribute had just been made for her.

“Aisling,” she couldn’t help correcting him.

“Okay, Aisling, because we obviously haven’t gotten to that point yet, my dad has no idea that you’re coming to see him today.”

Her eyes widened into saucers. Her arms were still wrapped tightly around her midsection lest the loss of pressure send her stomach into a full on revolt as it now felt likely to do. “What happened to just dropping off his dinner?”

“Well, I may have let it slip that you were back in town, you know, before you went out of commission obviously. He remembers you, isn’t that _convenient_? Did you know there was an opening for an intern at the sheriff’s office? He didn’t tell me about it, but let’s just say I _skimmed_ over a couple of the applications. You’ve definitely got the skills for it, if half of what Allison says is true.”

“ _Allison_?” Aisling whined. “You’ve been talking about me?”

“Of course. They’re my friends, and they were really worried about you when you had your fever.”

“What did you tell them?”

Finally Scott decided to throw in his two cents. Now that Aisling no longer looked close to puking, there was little harm in speaking up.

“Allison was just warning us not to try to fight you at close range. Something about being deadly within arms’ reach.”

Absently Aisling patted the small pocket on the breast of her black and grey plaid button down. Yep, still there. She could show them a thing or two about being deadly if she really wanted, and she only needed two fingers to prove it.

On second thought, wearing plaid might not have been her brightest idea. She couldn’t believe how easily she’d forgotten Stiles’ affinity for the pattern, but maybe it would work out in her favor this time, win her brownie points with his dad. She hadn’t seen him since she was a kid, and now his son was trying to get her a job with the guy.

“She was exaggerating. It’s what cousins do, you know.” Aisling just brushed it off and went back to staring out the window, waiting for the passing buildings to turn into the slightly more familiar police department parking lot.

* * *

It had all been planned out during her little bout of fever apparently. Stiles and Allison had positioned her in the car with an ulterior motive.

With Allison and Stiles at the front of the car, Sheriff Stilinski couldn’t see into the back where Scott and Aisling were waiting to pop out. Scott had been entrusted with an utterly health-filled, sugar-free, low-fat, diet-packed mini chocolate cake while Aisling found herself with a stuffed chicken breast that actually smelled too good to be homemade. Stiles crossed his heart and hoped to die that it was homemade though, childish, yes, but also believable. Tangy lemon zest, a mixture of herbs and spices featuring oregano, basil, and rosemary, and the smell crisp crust over the chicken assaulted her nose about as badly as a house on fire in the small space, but nicer and less frightening.

Stiles had his father wrapped in a tight hug, and he must have had his mouth running a mile a minute because the sheriff just looked at him with a tired but happy half-smile, his corners of his eyes crinkling. The huntress stood a little off to the side, waiting for the signal from Stiles to signal for Scott and Aisling to come out of the car.

Apparently he must have given the signal because Scott shifted the plastic container in his arms to get a good grip on the door handle.

“When I hand him the cake, you can come out. Stiles wanted me to tell you to pause for effect before going to up to his dad, but that’s just Stiles being a drama queen.”

For how eager he was to escape the confines of the car, he still managed a more genuine smile than Stiles had.

Well, that was nice of him. She could see why Allison was so hung up over him. He really did have a heart of gold.

The moment Aisling stepped out of the car and shut the door behind her with a booted foot, John Stilinski turned swiftly to face the unexpected guest. Immediately his face brightened with a broad grin that drew her across the parking lot as fast as her legs would carry her without risking the chicken in her care.

“I thought Stiles was pulling my leg when he said you were back in town,” the sheriff exclaimed with a hearty pat on the back once he finally relinquished his ironclad hug around Aisling’s shoulders.

It was only Stiles’ quick thinking that rescued the breast from getting squished to pieces between them.

Aisling took a deep breath in of the sheriff’s scent. In spite of the gunpowder and sweat, it was warm and inviting against every sense that screamed out against gunfire, and Aisling had never felt more at home in Beacon Hills than she did in that moment. This was the Papa Bear from her childhood.

“I’m not sure how much Stiles’ knows,” and Aisling delivered a poignant glance his way, “but I had an accident down in Bixby. I’ll be staying with Allison for a year until I get myself back on track.”

“No, no, he didn’t say anything about an accident. You know what, why don’t you come inside for a bit? I was just about to take a quick break for coffee before finishing some paperwork.”

Stiles snorted a little at the notion of a “quick break,” and the sound triggered a similar reaction with Aisling, who bit her lip to fight the little snigger at the back of her throat. Both of them looked sheepish when the sheriff mock glared at the two of them.

“Allison, why don’t you take the boys back home? I’ll call to let your father know I’m keeping Aisling for a while. He won’t mind, will he?”

“As long as you don’t arrest her,” Allison joked before waving goodbye and headed back down the sidewalk to her car.

“Don’t forget about the job offer, Aisling!” Stiles shouted gleefully from the backseat as it streaked past the entrance.

John Stilinski ran a hand down his face in a tired manner, but he smiled the whole way back to his office. The grin was infectious and soon had the entire department rushing with little steps to greet the sheriff and the young woman at his side. A couple of the older secretaries and phone operators recognized her and were quick to pass her chocolate bars from their hidden late-night emergency stashes. Helpless to refuse their gifts, Aisling just smiled back, accepting all of it with only a hint of unease until she could collapse into the seat across from the Stilinski head of house.

“I always wondered what happened to the little spark. You know, you were the best thing to ever happen to Beacon Hills. You probably don’t even remember how good you were with Stiles, even after his mother passed. There was never a moment he stopped smiling as long as you were with him. It was a downright shame when your parents moved away.”

She hummed in agreement, the memories still too foggy to recall at the moment. Only vaguely did she remember playing with kids that were not all dark-haired and capable of running faster than a speeding car.

“You said you lived in Bixby? How did the place treat you?”

The conversation stayed light for the length of time it took for the sheriff to consume more than two-thirds of the chicken breast. It was stuffed with spinach and pesto and feta cheese of all things. No wonder it smelled so good. Feta was the best, second only to extra sharp cheddar cheese. When she brought it up, she could’ve died laughing at the sight of the cheese falling from the sheriff’s mouth as he tried to argue that Feta came before cheddar.

“I know Stiles really wants you to get the internship position here with me, but I won’t force it on you if that’s not what you want. You’re a good girl with great talents. If your greatest dream isn’t to be a small-town sheriff, I’m not offended.”

Okay, this time, Aisling actually did die laughing if only for a brief moment.

“I was actually thinking about applying, sir,” she slipped easily into a more formal posture though her pulse fluttered against the skin of her throat.

The corners of his lips raised into a genuine smile. “I was hoping you’d say that. I just have to ask you one thing, okay? Before I even bring up the paperwork to get you the position.”

“Yeah, yeah, I mean, yes, sir, whatever you need to do.” Her nails dug crescents against her thighs through her plain black leggings.

For the first time since he’d seen her, the smile dropped completely from his features and was instead replaced by a weird mixture between a grimace and the expression of a man grasping at straws, something between confusion and desperation. It was not a good look for him.

“Do you not remember anything from when you were a kid, Ash?”

The waver in his voice and the drop in his tone brought tears unbidden to her eyes, and she couldn’t even understand why. What was she supposed to remember? Some accident had happened, and her parents decided moving was the only option. She was too young to remember.

That or the extensive therapy and conditioning exercises had trained her against remembering. She knew she had been eleven going on twelve when she first attended school in Bixby.

“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know what to tell you.”

“I didn’t mean to make you cry, Ash,” he mumbled into her hair as he wiped her face with a handkerchief. His knees protested when he pushed himself to stand. “Why don’t you stick around for a while until you feel better? I’ll have Clarisse drop you off. I have to call your Uncle anyway. You ought to eat some of that chocolate the girls out there gave you. It’ll make you feel better.”

She smiled a little at the Harry Potter reference and did exactly that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finals week for me here, but I'll keep uploading as best I can. But after finals it's two weeks of (relative) freedom depending on whether my family comes up to visit.


	8. ...The Cradle Will Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The human mind can only take so much goading until the dam begins to crack. At first it’s only a minute chip off the foundation. Then it’s a fissure. Then comes the fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the late update, didn't have internet for over a week

The moonrise rarely brought dreams of sunshine and daisies when the Man in the Moon decided to gift her with sleep at all. This night was no different.

From the moment she shut her eyes against the glimmer of stars beyond her window, bolted shut for fear of the howling creature in the woods, her vision swam through heavy clouds of smoke. Every time she took a breath she choked on it.

* * *

All around her wood floors creaked from the strain of keeping the house upright. Yes, it was a house, but not hers. Under the smoke, there was a distinct feeling of an ancient presence in the wood itself, pulsing as if through a direct connection to the Earth. She craned her neck to look above her. The flames were licking at the ceiling, already having eaten away at some parts.

Screams filled her ears. Shrieks from little children tore her heart to pieces. The barred basement windows were crowded with the older ones and adults all trying to claw at the ground outside, anything that might give them enough purchase to escape the inferno melting away their skin.

The acrid stench of burning flesh and hair stung her nose, but even in dreams, she could not will it away into nothingness. No pinch of her flesh could wake her from this hell on Earth.

She whimpered and backed away, scrambling up the stairs on all fours until they too gave way and abandoned all those unfortunate souls to their doom, to be crushed under the weight of the smoldering home and to be burned alive. She was certain she screamed when the wooden slats gave way underneath her. One hand had been on the railing at the top step. The other in the grasp of the matriarch, beautiful and calm even as the fire claimed her dressed. Their eyes remained locked during the sharp descent.

Then a brief darkness passed.

Her vision was still tinted with red from the fire when she reopened her eyes. Most of those who had been crowding the window had collapsed from smoke inhalation, but a few others were still huddled under desks, praying for a rescue that would never come. Then, they too dropped off, slumped over, and fell silent.

She fought to move, but the remnants of the staircase weighed heavy on her legs. White splinters of bones peeked out of one leg, though the adrenaline pumping through her veins hadn’t conveyed the notion of a broken leg to her brain just yet.

Though it would not be much longer until the pain caught up with her.

A familiar face swept into view, the skin already pink and taut from trying to heal the damage of the flames, but the subtle cleft in his chin remained. His hazel eyes, more green than brown, searched hers for something, though she couldn’t have said what in her pain-filled haze. They dropped down to the broken leg, and he disappeared from her side, gently letting her rest against the debris while he hastily worked his way around the room checking all the other fallen bodies.

With even more desperation in his movements than when he first left her side, he returned and with a sharp jerk, wrenched her free of the ruined steps. Her throat was raw from screaming by the time he could get her quieted down again.

He kept his body pressed close to hers, his coat dampened with water, to shield her from the worst of the smoke as it continued to billow around them, threatening suffocation and death in the growing blaze. She turned her head to face him, the sobs wracking her body as the chill ran through her. A trembling hand reached up to touch his face. Out of all the others, she was the last alive, and yet he would fail her too.

Her hand was cold and clammy against his skin even as the fire raged all around them. It remained there for some time until the heady rush of power hit him all at once. His back arched in a searing pulse of agony before his eyes flashed red. The twin red orbs fell to scan the sooty ashen face of the girl lying beneath him. Even as his eyes gleamed red with raw power and energy, hers had become lackluster and empty.

Her chest still rose and fell though weaker and weaker with each passing moment. She could hear nothing, see nothing, feel nothing through the closing darkness. It was a blessing almost.

Then, she felt the worst pain she ever had.

A fire of a different sort consumed her, body and soul, burning its way through every fiber of her being, every artery and every vein, until her bones were mended and the power that had rejuvenated him had done the same to her. The searing pain that began in her shoulder spread throughout her body for several moments before it had dulled into a warm glow.

Stronger now though far from unbreakable, he held her close until the embers diminished into ashes and the tongues of flame fell silent. Though his own body lay broken and burnt, the flesh practically melted from his bones, he still breathed. She could feel the movement of his lungs humming in time with her own.

Together they rested there. Come nightfall, the fire left nothing more than ashes around them and the foul reminder that though they lived, they had not escaped unscathed.

Her breath caught in her throat when she cracked open an eye to look at him. Ashamed of her reaction she buried her face in what little fabric remained of the coat that had no doubt contributed to her survival. Then, she found him being pulled away from her. Blackened arms reached out for him for a fraction of a second, too weak to hold themselves aloft any longer. Although her mouth opened and closed, no sound passed through her chapped lips.

Neither one strong enough to speak, to protest, or to even move, she watched him go, his disfigured body being driven off the gravel path for immediate medical treatment before her own body was covered in a blanket. Halfheartedly, she opened her mouth to object to the scratchy fabric against her fire-sensitized skin, but the next moment she looked up into a pair of warm brown eyes that reminded her of home. She had many homes, and though she’d just lost one, she remembered his. The home with a funny name. _Stilinski_.

* * *

Holy mother of God.

The sweat pooled in the crease of her stomach when she sat up in bed, throwing the covers away from her violently. Her breath came forth as ragged gasps, and she ran both hands through her hair, turning the dark curls into a mess of frizz.

The room shrank a little more with each breath. The pounding at the door compounded her terror until all she could do was hide under the bed and wish it all away.

Splinters of wood littered the ground after one last terrifying pound.

“Ash! ASH!”

Uncle Chris dropped to his knees, his feet still bare, but the hunting knife in his hand flashed in the light of the bedside lamp when he lowered himself onto all fours to look her in the eye. For a moment, she nearly struck out at his throat. Her arm dropped to the floorboards when she matched his gaze. His eyes held no malice, only concern.

Softer footsteps carried the much lighter figure of Allison into the room, her hair tied into a hasty bun, her eyes still half-closed and squinting from the sudden wake-up call. She dropped onto her stomach and squirmed her way to the corner where Aisling had tucked herself away, hands still tangled in her own hair. Gently the younger of the two pried one hand away and pulled it to her chest, letting Aisling adjust her heartbeat to the one under her hand.

“That’s it, Ash. Just match my heartbeat,” she whispered soothingly over and over again, softer and softer.

Gradually the terror was replaced by exhaustion, and Aisling finally allowed her cousin to draw her out from underneath the bed and back on top of it. Her uncle meanwhile had gotten a bowl of cool water and a washcloth and with a steady hand and practiced motions, dabbed the sweat away from her head and shoulders.

All three kept their silence for some time before Aisling raised her eyes to meet her uncle’s. “I remember now. I dreamt it again. I was there. I was in the fire. I could feel it.”

Distractedly, the hand Allison hadn’t been holding traveled up her chest, her fingertips brushing past her collarbone before they just traced the upper edge of a puckered crescent-shaped mark on the top of her shoulder blade. The movement wasn’t lost on Allison, who shot a meaningful glance at her father.

“I have to call Scott,” she whispered to him in as low a voice as she could manage, but Aisling still heard it. She still flinched at the thought of someone outside the family knowing about her, but she didn’t question it.

After Allison had cleared the room and began to climb the stairs back up to her room, Aisling spoke again.

“I remember it now, the fire. It was arson. I know it was. I could hear the adults talking. I heard a voice laughing. The doors were locked from the outside.” She shuddered against the washcloth he had pressed against her forehead. “I wasn’t supposed to remember that. I was taught to forget. Why would my parents want me to forget?”

Her eyes searched his for an answer, but his expression never faltered from the stoic mask. All he could do was drop the cloth into the water and pull her into a hug that felt more strained than comforting. More like he just wanted to keep her eyes from searching his.

“Go back to sleep, Ash. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

* * *

But they didn’t. They didn’t talk about it that morning, or the next, or the one after that. Any attempt to bring it up only ended with Aisling being left alone in the house. Chris couldn’t get out of the house fast enough, and Allison kept herself out of the way whenever possible.

The girl proved to be slightly more fruitful though she refused to speak about the fire on the grounds that it was none of her business. Any time Aisling managed to corner her, her hands flew up in a gesture of both surrender and to keep Aisling from advancing further.

“But you told Scott. Something about me remembering the fire was important enough to tell him. Why?” she demanded after pushing Allison into the basement.

Admittedly it wasn’t the best choice of places to corner the skilled huntress because of all the weapons lining the walls, but Aisling had been trying for days to get a straight answer out of either of the Argents. She honestly wouldn’t have cared if she’d been forced to corner Allison in a grocery store with dozens of witnesses.

“The only fire of significance in Beacon Hills was the Hale house fire. You being there might mean something to someone he knows. That’s all I can say, okay? It’s not my business to say anything else.”

Aisling pouted but relented. She recognized the name. It had a heavy weight attached to it that pulled at the tenseness inside her, taut like a bowstring. The name brought no comfort to her.

After that, Aisling just tried to force the memories back into the recesses of her mind where they’d been kept for so long.

Ever since that night, she’d avoided anyone associated with the Hale fire. Any called from Sheriff Stilinski automatically went to voicemail, same as every call from Peter Hale though she would have avoided him sooner had she known his surname. She had Allison to thank for that little bit of information though Scott might have also had a hand in revealing it.

Aisling had only been a moment away from leaving the Argent house to meet Peter about getting her stupid towel back when Allison ran out the door behind her, her phone pressed against her ear and Scott babbling on the other end.

“Where are you going? I thought Dad told you to stay inside or actually go to work today,” Allison had shouted after her, a relentless grip around her elbow.

Aisling could have easily ripped her arm out of Allison’s grasp, but she didn’t. The girl had helped ease her out of the terror after the nightmare that brought her memories back. She owed her enough to stay.

“I’m going to meet Peter for coffee. He said he has something to show me in addition to finally giving me my stuff back,” she answered heatedly. As her anger rose, so too did the hairs on the back of her neck.

“PETER? AS IN PETER _HALE_ ,” Scott shouted from the other end of the line.

He said it so loudly that Aisling didn’t even need her suspiciously superior hearing to catch the last name.

The frustrated roar that tore itself from Aisling’s chest was definitely not a sound Allison expected to hear.

Furious and blind to the light fog that dampened her clothes, she sprinted away from Allison and darted between the trees until she was far enough into the woods that Allison wouldn’t be able to find her. Her footsteps crashed through the low foliage and splashed water upon the slick rocks of the streams she crossed. Branches cracked and sang in the air as they whipped across her skin, leaving thin raised welts in their wake. Once she was certain of the distance between them, she pulled up Peter’s number and waited for him to pick up, stilling herself completely to slow her racing heart.

“Yes, Aisling, is something the matter? I can hear you panting,” he answered in a smooth voice that grated on Aisling’s last nerve. The bastard had to have known her this whole time and he had the audacity to continue the charade.

“Stop playing me for a fucking fool,” she screamed at him through the phone. “I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t want to see you, I don’t even want to be in the same city as you. Don’t call this number again.”

“Don’t you want to know—,“ he began, probably to try and reason with her to see him again, but she cut him off first with a light tap on the screen.

She should have known better. All the familiarity should have been a flashing neon sign. Sure, he’d saved her life beyond a shadow of a doubt, but then he let her believe that he was a perfect stranger. When she couldn’t even understand why he looked like someone she knew, he passed it off as a similarity and nothing more. Surely the person who saved her life would have respected her more than that.

Instead of owning up to it, he maintained a foolish farce. Instead of demystifying the accident that ripped her away from Beacon Hills, he kept up the same pretense her parents had. She had been injured in a random accident, and the memory loss had been completely natural.

But it hadn’t been.

Those first few months of therapy hadn’t been to work through the fear of fire. It had been to force her to forget the fire entirely.

And now she knew why.

The Hale house fire had been an act of arson, and she was just one more innocent life the arsonist could have easily extinguished. Except when she survived, her memories were locked away in her own mind. But why? That’s what she didn’t understand, and Peter was definitely offering up information. Only she couldn’t possibly trust him anymore after he played the very same game with her.

Aisling could’ve punched herself in the face with pure fury and desperation when she realized where her legs had carried her. Of all the places, her subconscious mind had brought her here. All she could do was fall and lie in the leaves as sobs wracked her body. Her hands tore several of those leaves to shreds before she stormed over to the closest tree, a half dead husk, and began to pound her fists into the rough bark until they were so raw and bloody that the air passing over the bare flesh hurt more than the wood itself.

When that failed to extinguish her temper, she resorted to kicking the poor thing, arcing her legs up high to remove the lowest and weakest branches. Her shins and calves were colored an ugly purple from all her useless attempts to break the thicker branches, but no blood stained the skin yet.

Breathing heavily with tear tracks through the dirt on her face, she stomped up to the broken front door and kicked that down too, relishing the sight of the splinters flying around her in the rising dust cloud. Her brown pleather jacket flapped out behind her from the swiftness of the motion. Her dark grey jeans turned several shades lighter from the dust the fallen door kicked up, but she continued on through the house until she came to the broken stairs into the basement.

She’d been prepared to rage and break down the walls of the ruined house, but she hadn’t been prepared for the wave of grief that coursed through her in that moment. Instantly all traces of anger were washed away.

The mother of them all had stood here, exactly where she now knelt. She had been so strong even when her life was going up in flames. She had not cried, but nor had she accepted her death as a fact of life. Aisling had seen it in her eyes even then as a child. Though the fire claimed many lives, Peter and Aisling hadn’t been the only survivors. The arsonist would be found, and the meaningless deaths of the Hale family matriarch and all her family would be avenged. That much had been certain then, but Aisling had no way of knowing if that was still the same now.

While Aisling changed her position to dangle her legs over the edge of the broken top step, a dark car rumbled to a stop just within the cover of the trees but far enough from the gravel drive that the sound never reached her.

The gravel crunched underfoot every once in a while, but the heavy leaf litter muted the majority of them to little more than a light crackle of the dry leaves. Slowly, the footsteps reached the creaky porch where each step grew just that much more careful. No sound could be made to startle the girl perched over the shadow of a basement.

They passed the open doorway to the living room, to the kitchen, to the bathroom and finally slowed to a complete halt just behind her.

Aisling stiffened a little from the flutter of air behind her when whoever it was knelt down behind her and leaned with his back against the wall to her right, one knee pulled up to his chest, the other stretched out to touch the opposite wall.

Just having him in the hallway with her immediately stilled the churning in the pit of her stomach. Instead of feeling driven to run by the strength of the earthy scent that filled the narrow space, she felt more alive and significantly more powerful than she had when she first fled into the woods.

He smelled of leather and the forest around her, the scent stronger than it had ever been with either Scott or Peter.

One glance at his eyes told her all she needed to know. Hazel eyes, but this pair more golden brown than green.

Another Hale, but not one that came forward immediately as familiar.

“When I told Peter to leave me alone, that meant no sending lackeys either,” she hissed under her breath but refused to look his way, preferring the dark pit below her.

“Believe me, I’m not his lackey.”

Her eyes shot up to meet his. The hazel orbs lacked the judgment she’d grown accustomed to from her therapist, the concern of her father, the fear and exhaustion of her uncle, and the worry of her cousin. Instead, the green-gold blazed momentarily with a scarlet hue before returning to normal.

What on God’s green earth . . .

It was late at night. Not a single car was out this far into the woods. Not even the Moon decided to show more than a sliver of itself in the sky.

His eyes never should have flashed that shade of red, not under these lighting circumstances.

“Okay,” she mumbled slowly, drawing out the second syllable longer than was strictly necessary. “But you’re still here because of him. I don’t know you, but you obviously know Peter. Obviously he knows me so he sent you because he knows I’m not talking to him even though you are _not his lackey_.”

He just stared at her, green-gold eyes watching hers skeptically. His brows knit together for a moment before his chest inflated with a deep breath.

His eyes cast down into the pit, his voice sounded distant in the darkness, not unlike an echo, when he spoke. “You survived a fire that wasn’t meant for you. You were supposed to forget for a reason, but neither I nor Peter should be the one you hear it from.”

“And why’s that? Peter seemed pretty eager to spill the beans before I shut him down.” She fiddled with a large splinter of the broken edge of the floor until it snapped off in her hand.

“Go home. Tell your uncle that Peter’s offer still stands, his words, not mine.”

“You know, for a not-lackey, you seem to be delivering a lot of his messages,” she pointed out timidly though she flushed at the strength coursing through her when he stood and brushed soot and ash from his jeans. Something inside her demanded a challenge, wanted her to rise as well and match his height or stand even taller. She could not stay seated and let herself be talked down to.

Only, she did, because Aisling Jasper did not do confrontations. Least of all with given-name-nameless strangers.

He deigned to reply.

Long, confident strides carried him swiftly from the ruined house, down the gravel drive with the crunch of gravel underfoot, and over to the driver’s side of a car too dark for Aisling to make out in the night.

“Go home, Aisling.”

Perhaps any other night Aisling would have let him drive off without another word, but something compelled her to chase him down before he could reach the main road.

“It doesn’t seem fair to let you leave without even offering your name.”

“It’s Derek,” he bit out before rolling up the driver’s side window without another word, green-gold still dancing in the small shred of moonlight.

* * *

Coming home, Aisling hadn’t known what to expect. Sure, a conversation with her uncle about her arson revelation had been a long time coming, but being told to bring it up again by a mysterious Hale relative in the ruined house hadn’t been her idea of the ideal time or place for such a reminder.

Yet, it proved necessary.

No matter how Chris fought to ignore the beating of her small fist against the door to his study (and then his bedroom, where he slipped inside the moment she left to use the restroom), few could withstand the hours-long stand-off only feet away.

To her credit, Aisling never once spoke a word beyond Derek’s instructions.

“Peter’s offer still stands.”

Beyond that, she only maintained a steady four-beat rhythm against the dark wooden panels until the wood gave way as it was swung open.

“Sit down,” he offered, gesturing vaguely at the unmade bed in the center of the room, while he shut the door, stepped around her, and poured himself just enough scotch to put himself at ease.

Honestly, to be fair, the stare he was currently receiving may have been just short of withering.

“This isn’t how this is supposed to happen. Your mother should never have allowed you to come back here, Ash. Your father and I were both against it the moment she suggested it. I love her, I do, but when she decided that she knew what was best for you, I wasn’t in a place to question it, and neither was your father. My sister made some bad decisions, stupid decisions, and she’s paid for them with her life.”

Aisling’s eyes widened considerably. Her lungs must have stopped because she felt short of breath. “You mean Kate’s dead? Since when?”

In hindsight, there were probably nicer ways of asking that.

“It was a while ago, but before the animal attack on my wife. Kate set the fire that almost got you killed. You know the only other survivor was Peter, Peter Hale.”

“I remember him.” Her lips were set in a hard line.

Chris watched her carefully, noting the clenching of her hands into fists and the way she dug her nails into her palms hard enough to whiten her knuckles.

“After you woke up from the fire, Peter would have preferred you stay in Beacon Hills, but both Candice and Kate thought the risk was too great. They put you into therapy to make you forget. Kate made a stupid decision and she didn’t want to risk you telling the police.”

“She set a house on fire with me and a dozen innocent people still inside. She locked the doors and blocked the windows from outside. That’s not a stupid decision. That’s premeditated mass murder. How could you let them do that to me?”

“I was misguided by blood. She was my sister, Ash. I had a duty to protect her.”

“Bullshit. She would have killed me if Peter hadn’t saved my life. And you let her walk.” Her voice cracked and she wiped away the tear so angrily that she left a raised, red mark across her cheekbone.

“He didn’t save your life, Ash. He cursed it. You were in therapy to forget the fire and to be trained to control yourself. You had dreams you couldn’t explain, sensitivity other people couldn’t even dream of, and raw physical power you couldn’t learn to control by yourself. He’s the reason why you still have anxiety attacks.”

“He saved my life when Kate would have taken it.”

That silenced him for several minutes.

“I can’t excuse what she did, nor the path that Candice and Kate set for you. All I can say is that Beacon Hills will change you.” He rubbed his temples with both hands before hunching over to rest his forearms on his thighs when he leaned across the gap between the study desk and the bed. “Peter offered his help once he fully recovered from his burns, but by then, your mother had already moved you to Bixby. Our families have never had peaceful relations, and your mother strictly forbade me from taking him up on the offer.”

For a man with so many guns and other weapons in his home, he was remarkably spineless. Admittedly Aisling wasn’t his daughter, but still, if he knew all this, he should have at least had the sense to go to the police about a _murder_.

“Fine. Whatever I needed his help with, I’ll deal with it on my own.”

The lines on his face only grew deeper.

“Then you’ll fail. You’re going to talk to Scott tomorrow. You are not to see Peter again, you understand me?”

“We aren’t on speaking terms, all right? I’ve been actively avoiding the guy for more than a week now.” Aisling rubbed her knuckles absently before she realized she felt no pain. The skin was already mostly healed, only taut and pink when she balled her hand into a fist. “You said he cursed my life. Tell me _exactly_ what you meant.”

Uncle Chris shared a look with Allison that resulted in the younger girl leaving the room with nothing but a quick pat on Aisling’s back before she disappeared up the stairs.

If Allison thought that was encouraging, she couldn’t have been more wrong. All it did was heighten the tension building up inside Aisling’s chest. The longer Chris kept silent, rubbing his hands together as if the repetitive motions might make this easier for the both of them, the louder the growling grew. For a long time Aisling didn’t realize she was responsible for the sound. When she did, a heavier silence than before took its place.

And finally he talked.

* * *

Aisling laid spread eagled across the nautical bedspread, her eyes trained on a glittery sparkle in the spackle. Her head fell short of reaching the pile of pillows propped up against the headboard, and her legs hung over the edge, one over the foot of the bed, the other over the side. If her body didn’t feel so weighed down by today’s adventures in self-discovery, she might have had the energy to stand up and tear down that lonely sparkle. Instead she let it taunt her from five feet overhead.

She still couldn’t fully wrap her mind around Chris’s confession. All this time he knew. Throughout her childhood, he’d let her sleep over with Allison, had her family over for holiday dinners, all that jazz, and not once did the thought of turning to the police cross his mind. He would rather have his daughter and niece playing with a mass murderer than see said murderer and sister arrested.

As if nothing was wrong, he’d allowed Kate to lock her in the basement, no light, no food, no water, for over a day because she broke a couple of fine china plates. Because he knew the risk that she posed to their safety, he knew what she could do if left unrestrained.

He let her be treated like an animal.

Because she was one.

A wolf to be exact. Or to be incredibly exact, a werewolf, because knowing the difference made everything so much easier to handle. _Not_.

Finding out the truth after all the time since she supposedly received the bite only made her question everything she’d taken for granted before. She’d had pretty good hearing when the school conducted those annual tests, such good hearing that the nurses liked to mess with her once they figured it out too. If one kid couldn’t hear that well, they’d turn up the sound so she could hear it even while she waited in line in the hallway. Now she knew where that sensitivity came from.

Her immense capacity for speed and endurance relative to her classmates had been obvious, but she trained so often that she’d just assumed it was a product of working her ass off. To find out that it was because of an Alpha’s bite and a house fire more than just burst that bubble. It was a real confidence killer.

But other things, like her sense of smell, were harder to ignore. Her mother had always passed it off as particularly bad allergies. People had reactions all the time, some people more than others, and if Aisling had to count herself as one of them, it was no cause for concern.

Even when panic attacks at the forest’s edge proved to be a frighteningly common occurrence.

Only Uncle Chris couldn’t offer an explanation for that. All he could offer was guess that it was the wolf in her reacting to the local pack. Candice had chosen Bixby to relocate to because it was purely free of wolves and any influences that might force the change in Aisling, which begged the question of why she would suddenly be okay with leaving Aising in a known werewolf hotspot.

Aisling turned over onto her stomach and hauled herself forward until she could bury her head in the pillow mound. Maybe the downy soft cushions could make the thought of meeting with Scott a little less daunting.

With her uncle’s last words before he headed upstairs himself, she could only assume the worst.

Werewolf transitions were meant to be undertaken as a pack, each member supporting each other, but she had no one. Neither Allison nor Chris had the means to help her, and after all the harm dealing with werewolves had done to their family, Aisling could see why they would hesitate to become involved now.

Still, it was Kate’s fault she was even in this mess in the first place. He ought to feel some responsibility to deal with the consequences.

Dumping her with a known werewolf, even if it was Allison’s boyfriend, hardly qualified.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that is it for that chapter. I've been waiting to post this for forever. It was giving me some trouble and I'm still not 100% about it, but I'll get back to editing it eventually. ON TO THE PREPARING THE NEXT CHAPTER.
> 
> Also, if anyone is uncomfortable because of how I say god's name in vain and other stuff (ex. jesus christ, holy mother of god), just let me know and I'll stop doing it.


	9. Reflections

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> School's just starting up again for me, but I'll be working fewer hours during the week. But I also have my screen printing work to get back to so we'll see how it goes. I've racked up quite a word count for not a lot of action, and when I say slow build, I mean it. And I'm sorry for that.

_Christmas. Her second in Bixby. Everything was wrong about it, even after learning from the previous year. The tall Douglas fir brushed against the ceiling before Aisling and her father could push it fully upright. Uncle Chris had to pull out the chainsaw from the shed in the garden to cut down the length of the trunk and remove the lowest branches so presents could still fit underneath._

_Not even the corner where Candice decided to place the tree was right. Sure, it put the bay window right behind the tree and made it suitable for a picture opportunity, but for actually camping out in front of it and roasting marshmallows in the fireplace, it presented quite the fire hazard and stood much too close to the couch to make watching television comfortable, what with all the branches and ornaments in her face._

_This was all wrong._

_To make matters worse, Candice had decided to go on a business trip for the weekend, some important conference up in Seattle that she absolutely_ had _to attend. Since Uncle Chris, Aunt Victoria, and Aunt Kate were in town with Allison, Candice decided it would be a great chance to have a weekend alone with her husband._

_Spending quality time just husband and wife must have given Uncle Chris an idea because shortly after Aisling’s parents left for the airport, he came up with the brilliant plan of having a night out on the town with just his wife and his daughter. Meanwhile, Aunt Kate would stay behind and play dutiful babysitter to Aisling, even though Aisling put up quite the argument that she was old enough to be left by herself before they even made it to the car._

_At least Uncle Chris had had the good sense to read to Aunt Kate the lengthy and admittedly exhaustive list of Aisling’s suspected allergens and various triggers before he left or Aisling might have actually believed Aunt Kate innocent of foul play._

_But Aunt Kate had heard it all. Whether she chose to listen to it was beyond Aisling’s ability to confirm._

_Her eyes were just beginning to drift shut when thin tendrils of smoke began to waft into the front room, invisible but not undetectable. The sharp scent of it burned her nostrils._

_Movements slow and steady, almost like a newborn filly just learning to walk, she fought to rise, both hands grasping at the furniture, clawing at the coarse upholstery fabric until she stood on her own two feet. Every breath seemed to come with a higher price. Her chest didn’t seem to want to expand anymore. Each attempt to try left her mind foggier and her steps clumsier._

_Before she realized where her feet had taken her, she startled at her own reflection in the mirrored backing of the china cabinet. Many of them had been a gift from Aunt Kate. Yes, she knew that. She remembered that. Gifts collected over the years. Another plate or another set of teacups probably already sat underneath the tree._

_Her head beat a furious rhythm against the inside of her skull. Fingertips ghosting over the latch on the kitchen window, she fumbled several more times before she finally managed a grip strong enough to force in the night air._

_But the cool rush only facilitated the spread of the smoke that forced her to her feet in the first place. Like a wave, the scent of fire struck her down. The grooves of the hardwood floorboards grated against the soft skin of her cheek, leaving behind rows of miniscule red sores. One of the dining table chairs fell to the floor with a slam that reverberated through her tender cheek after she tried to use it as an anchor. Another fell on her opposite side._

_The third proved to be the luckiest. By the time she propped herself up in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen, the breeze from the window wrapped the smoke around her so thickly she could scarcely breathe._

_All she could hear was the furious rush of blood in her ears, growing louder with each successive beat of her heart. Frantic to escape the oncoming attack, Aisling forced herself through the doorway. If she could just make it to the front door, she might be able to stop it._

_A hand rose to encircle her throat when it decided to stop working. She forgot how to swallow. Her eyes burned and her hands shook even as she repeated her therapist’s words aloud._

_“Eyes closed. Breathe in. Breathe out. Block it out.”_

_Only it wasn’t working._

_For a second time, her knees gave way underneath her._

_Instead of meeting with the floor, a flailing arm slammed with terrifying force into the glass doors of the china cabinet. She managed to save herself from a spill, but instead cast down no less than four of the delicate, decorative plates in her stead._

_Each plate splintered into more fragments than Aisling had expected. Though some sailed into the exposed skin of her calves, the sound of impact against the floor hurt the most. Already sensitive from the smoke-scent, the fallen plates proved to be the last straw._

_Though her throat refused to cooperate fully, her lungs pumped hysterically. Her vision faded out at the edges, and the more she tried to right herself, the more gravity appeared to work against her._

_Collapsed and heaving on the floor of the dining room, more pieces of fancy platters joined her, raining down around her._

_She couldn’t have pinpointed the exact moment Aunt Kate barreled into the room from upstairs, but she could tell enough to know that the smoke-scent stopped the moment she knelt by her side._

_Everything after that blurred together in a haze. More than once Aisling’s head rolled forward and she lost consciousness, but the final time she came back expecting to see the light of some hospital room or at least her own bedroom, all she came across was darkness and the sharp stink of rodenticide in the far corner of the room she’d been tossed into._

_Fumbling about blindly, the inevitable crash of stacked boxes only served to increase her already racing heartbeat, and the rising cloud of dust that swirled around her only made it that much harder to breathe._

_When she screamed, fists pounding against the door, her ears registered the sound as barely human. Instead it was warped, twisted, torn up and spit out into something less than human._

_Animalistic._

_A roar tore itself from her lungs. Droplets of blood splattered on the concrete step beneath the door. Though she couldn’t see in the pitch black darkness, the metallic scent scrambled her mind into a frenzy. Deeper her fingernails drove themselves into the flesh of her palms, each beat against the wood turning the trickle into a rivulet into a stream down to her elbows._

_Finally she stopped and backed away from the door on legs that shook not with exhaustion but with restraint. Given the chance, every muscle was prepared to propel her into a headlong sprint._

_The darkness surrounded her, forcing her other senses to compensate. For the longest time all she could hear was the rushing beat of her own heart._

_Her body surged forward the instant the heavy basement door opened to the barest crack, nails scrabbling at the other side of the door. The tough points scratched at the paint and her hands twisted to get at the chain that kept the door from opening any further. When that failed, she withdrew her hands and resorted to slamming her meager weight against the solid wood._

_It was in the middle of one such charge that the cacophony of snarls and growls was broken and altogether silenced with a single gunshot._

_Immediately her slender form collapsed to the floor, slumping limply against the steps and allowing gravity to carry her downwards. Crimson fluid leaked from the smoking wound in her side. Even her thoughts moved sluggishly as she tried to rationalize what had just happened._

_What was Kate doing with a gun? Or was it even Kate? Why would anyone shoot her?_

_When the light spilled through from the doorway, now wide open, she whimpered. Blurred shapes moved towards her, and with little heart she snapped at the hands that wrapped themselves around her upper arms. On her feet again, her head shot forward to expel her stomach contents onto the hallway rug. She never liked it anyway._

_But she couldn’t recall ever eating anything to make her vomit look that particular shade of black. It_ felt _poisonous. Wrong. Her skin crawled just looking at what had just come out of her body._

_After that, whatever poison the bullet introduced into her body increased the speed of its rampant destruction of her body. Several more times she leaned over the side of the bed she had been strapped into and vomited more inky fluid into the bucket that had been so kindly left for her. The simple act of rising off the bed far enough to reach the bucket though caused the rough leather cuffs around her wrists to chafe against her skin. By night fall the skin had been rubbed raw and left to bleed against the sheets. The metallic tang of blood in the air only made her stomach less stable. It was a vicious cycle honestly, and she found herself wishing the bullet had gone through her brain rather than her side._

_Of course, once she came to that realization, a lone figure stood silhouetted in the doorway to the small, cramped room. Honestly, the lack of insulation and shoddy construction suggested it was more of a shed anyway though she didn’t know how she’d ended up in one. Her Bixby home didn’t have a garden shed large enough to pull this off._

_The figure shut the door and became lost in the shadows, but she could still smell its approach._

_She flinched and pulled hard at the leather straps when a hand reached out to brush the sweat-dampened curls out of her face. An Instant later and the hand was replaced by the blissfully cool muzzle of a gun. At once she forced her entire body to lie still._

_She hadn’t meant it when she wished for a bullet to the brain. Honest. That was all exaggeration._

_Her wide brown eyes held the finger on the trigger fast with a frightened stare, praying to all the gods that at least one might rescue her from this hell. Something in the hall clattered to the floor, and for a brief moment, the gun’s muzzle warmed by her flushed skin was withdrawn._

_In that single instant, she summoned all of her strength and made her move. Lightning quick, her head surged upwards and her jaws closed around the gun-wielding wrist with enough force to cause the gun to fall to the floor._

_The gods must have been watching over her after all because luck was definitely with her. With the safety off, it ought to have been much more likely for a bullet to pierce either the captive or the captor. Yet, instead it tore through the leather of the strap holding down her left arm. Even having one arm unrestrained returned the tide to her advantage. Before the gun could even be reclaimed, she’d freed herself entirely and now crouched in a defensive position, precariously perched on the headboard._

_The night could have ended there. A half-crazed girl looking down the barrel of a gun, moment’s away from attacking Kate, for that’s who it had to be._

_Only the gun had been the least of her worries._

_Aisling had all of one second to recognize the sudden flash of blue light as a tazer’s electric arc. There was just not enough space in the locked room to escape the reach of that horrible thing._

* * *

_“How could you let her stay with those animals? You’re an Argent by blood, Candice. How the hell could you think that was a good idea?”_

_“Well, I’m sorry I just never expected their house to go up in flames. Maybe next time you’ll think before you try to commit a mass murder. Look at what you’ve done to her. Just look at that. Disgusting.”_

_A fragile child’s body lay motionless under the starchy white sheets of the hospital bed. Multiple machines beeped on either side of her, and beyond the window stood two women, a brunette and a muddy blonde decked out in a leather jacket and tight jeans, nothing at all like the former dressed to the nines in a black and white power suit._

_The child’s skin was the bright pink of a cold shower with a pumice stone for a wash cloth. Entirely isolated in the climate controlled room, as a victim of a fire, her skin was much too sensitive for outside air or other contaminants, though it hadn’t yet been a week since the fire and she already stunned doctors. As a precaution, she remained in the quarantined room, which cost a good deal less than the oxygen chamber they’d placed her inside previously._

_“What were you thinking? I just want to know the honest truth.”_

_Candice sighed and ran her fingers along the edge of the window into her daughter’s room. Way too much dust there for a hospital to really call itself clean, but that was beside the point. “I’d been talking with Talia for several months. Unlike you or Chris, I didn’t grow up to be a hunter. My mother wanted nothing more than to get away from the Argent name. That’s why neither I nor my mother care to hyphenate or reduce it to a middle name. I have nothing against the wolves. I would rather see them as allies or friends or just neutral parties than as my enemies or my quarry.”_

_“You act like they’re capable of living in_ our _world. Like they could ever be normal!”_

_The brunette narrowed her eyes at her cousin until she mimed zipping up her mouth and throwing away the key. Ridiculous as it was, at least it was something._

_“Talia thought they could. We didn’t want to start a war. We wanted a truce, and Aisling was the way forward. You never got to see it because you couldn’t see past your own prejudices, but Aisling was one of them. She was practically pack if you actually saw her run. Both Talia and I knew that the kids were holding themselves back, but Aisling always gave it her all. She was a wolf long before you made her into one.”_

_“Excuse me?” Kate laughed shrilly, placing a hand over her heart like she’d taken offense. “Before_ I _made her into one? I’m not the one who bit her.”_

_“Maybe not, but if you hadn’t started the fire, I’d still have a human for a daughter.”_

_“Death is better than becoming a monstrosity,” Kate repeated her side of the family’s motto tonelessly._

_“Maybe that’s the way you see it, but you’re not a mother. Aisling is my daughter, and I’d much rather have her alive than dead, even if it means leaving Beacon Hills.”_

_“Getting out of dodge isn’t going to change the fact that she is a werewolf. There is nothing in the world that can change that except for a good, clean kill.”_

_The businesswoman’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Kate, if you value your life, you are going to leave this hospital, and you are going to leave my daughter alone.”_

_“You know how I see wolves, Candice. You want think your daughter’s still human, that’s fine, but she’s got to think it too.”_

_Kate grinned slyly, and Candice couldn’t help but feel afraid for her daughter’s safety. She never hated the woman more in her life. This was a direct threat, and not one Kate seemed to be making lightly._

_“What are you talking about?”_

_“I’m talking about therapy, intense, routine therapy. Let her believe it’s all in her mind. Maybe gloss over the truth with her therapist, or better yet, just get a hypnotist to pose as a therapist, and Aisling might never have to know the truth.”_

_“It’s not going to work. She was as good as pack to them. All the therapy in the world won’t erase that.”_

_“You’d better hope it does because I’m sorry, but I’m not going to prison for doing this town a favor. Tell you what, I’ll even find you a therapist willing to do the trick.”_

_“No, thank you, Kate, I’ll make that choice for myself. You’d better hope she doesn’t bite you herself when she finds out what you’ve done to her.”_

_“Yeah, well, good luck with everything, Candice. I hope your truce was worth it,” Kate laughed over her shoulder as she made her way back down the hall, the heels of her boots clicking loudly against the tiled floors._

_Once more Candice traced the window’s edge, letting the dust collect on her fingertip until she wiped it off on her skirt. She hadn’t thought it possible, training a bitten wolf to ignore its own instincts, but if Kate had meant her threats to eliminate the risk Aisling would pose, it was the only option to keep Aisling safe._

_According to the nurses on the floor, Peter Hale was located in the Burn Ward, still recovering from more severe burns than Aisling, but he seemed to be responding well to the medication and had been observed to be conscious though mute. Perhaps he might be willing to speak with her. After all he had risked his life to save her daughter’s. That had to mean something._

_Obviously, it meant little if his silence was anything to go by. Candice knew to expect little from someone so horribly weakened by his body’s efforts to repair itself, but she needed answers and both Derek and Laura Hale had disappeared in the aftermath of the fire, off living with other relatives until they came of age, she assumed._

_“You saved my daughter’s life. I know how you must hate me for what’s been done to your family, but you must know that I never wanted any of this to happen. Maybe Talia told you something of our plans, maybe not, but you saved her anyway. By giving her the bite. I won’t let her become a wolf. She will never be a part of your pack or anyone else’s. She will live a human life, understand, and I’ll not tolerate any of your meddling to change that.”_

_For a ‘thank you,’ it came out quite confrontational and more than a little aggressive, but Candice would protect her daughter no matter what. If that meant severing ties with the Alpha responsible for biting her, then so be it. Aisling couldn’t be allowed to become a wolf, or every member of the Argent family would be upon her in an instant. They were all about following the Code, an archaic awaway of life that Candice never agreed to. To the rest of the family, her belief and her mother’s that lycanthropy was preferable to death read as cowardice, but she couldn’t be fooled into thinking all wolves were creatures of evil._

_Talia had shown her otherwise. The wolves were capable of harnessing a great magic hidden deep within the earth with the help of their druid emissaries, and Candice had always found it fascinating. If Aisling had any hope of learning to control the wolf within completely without even realizing it, she needed to be taught by a druid._

_Only they could be trusted with the truth regarding Aisling’s condition and still have the knowledge to address it._

_Finding a druid with the proper certification and no connections to any packs proved to be more difficult than Candice had expected. Druids weren’t always recluses, but the few still practicing seemed to be entirely too caught up with their own packs. For obvious reasons, Candice couldn’t even entertain the notion of having a bound druid meet with her daughter. The wolves would catch the scent immediately, and then it would be good bye, Aisling._

_Dr. Carroway had been a godsend, a self-proclaimed retired druid. Her explanation was that age had caught up with her, and her days of running with the wolves had long since passed. But she was not against helping the next generation even if the request Candice presented her with was far from the usual._

_It was far from cheap too._

_The first bill from the druid-therapist represented a large portion of the family’s income, but Candice and Gregory were willing to pay whatever it took to make sure their daughter could live a normal life._

_To be fair, Aisling did her best to play pretend and sit pretty like the porcelain doll everyone made her out to be, but in a few short weeks, it became all too obvious that what Candice had hoped for was entirely impossible. The wolf would not and could never be subdued entirely. No manner of druid spells or enchantments would ever remove its influence. All their efforts up to that point had merely been preventative, band aids over cracks in a dam wall. Kate’s decision to tease the wolf to the surface and lock her in the basement had opened the floodgates._

_If Aisling hadn’t been standing at the precipice before, she now hung from her fingertips._

_The wolf had awakened and it was only a matter of time before she lost herself to it._

* * *

_All the doctors and nurses were amazed by the speed of his recovery, so amazed that it was astounding how no one had noticed the sour turn in the news as of late. More mutilations, more murders, more missing persons reports, pets acting aggressively, just a general tone of darkness staining the atmosphere of the small town of Beacon Hills. And they were all focused on him, finally awake and fully mobile after his brush with death._

_Peter couldn’t tolerate it any longer. As soon as he was free of the recovery suite, he was on a mission._

_If he could disregard the sense of urgency pushing him forward, he might have cared about how badly he frightened the elderly couple in the house where she should have been, after he pinned the couple’s youngest son to the wall by his throat._

_“The Jasper family hasn’t lived here for a long time, sir. They sold the house to us for a very good price, needed to move quickly, they said. Please just let my son go and we won’t have to call the police,” the older gentleman bargained, the wrinkled skin flapping under his chin._

_He couldn’t believe his luck. First, he’s nearly burnt alive. Then when he tries to take responsibility for his actions, it just gets better. It was hard enough trying to clean up the mess that that the arsonists left behind. Their trail was messy, but in his weakened state, his heart wasn’t truly in it. Now, the one person he needed to find more than the chief arsonist had disappeared, and the new homeowners didn’t have a clue where._

_“I need a number. I need to speak with them urgently,” he insisted once he released the poor man._

_Hastily, the grandmotherly woman shuffled back into the living room on the opposite side of the wall. His sharp ears caught the sound of rustling papers, like receipts brushing against each other compared to the rub of magazines in the waiting room of the recovery center he’d wasted his life in most recently. When she finally reentered the hallway, she had a grocery store receipt in her hand with a number scribbled on the back of it in surprisingly small print considering her own need for magnifying glasses for eyewear._

_“I couldn’t find the number for the Jaspers, but that should get you to a friend of theirs, I think. It’s been years, sir, since they left. The number’s probably changed by now.”_

_Honesty, he could’ve killed that entire family for all the good they did him. The place didn’t even smell like the Jaspers anymore. It was all old people and muscle cream. Even if he’d spent the majority of his youth with Derek in the Hale house, he could recognize Aisling’s scent from anywhere. She’d been in the Hale house often enough._

_Even the voice on the other end of the line was wrong._

_“Who is this?” a masculine voice asked, rough and sharp at the same time._

_“I need to speak with Aisling Jasper, or her mother. It’s about an urgent matter.”_

_“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the voice answered, all aggression replaced by cold steel._

_Peter paused for only a moment while the gears in his mind turned. Ah, that would explain it. A friend of the Jasper family, obviously meant he’d just dialed an Argent. “Then you know why I’m calling. I’m afraid I have no cure for the_ bite _she received, but I can offer my services. I am a bit of an_ expert _, you might say, regarding these sorts of cases. I would only need to see her once.”_

_“That won’t happen. She doesn’t live in Beacon Hills anymore, if that’s where you’re calling from, and she’s never going back.”_

_He slammed a fist into the wall of the phone booth so hard that it cracked around his knuckles. “Fine,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Just let her mother know that my offer still stands.”_

_And wasn’t that a kick to the ribs?_

_A werewolf removed from its pack._

_Of course the thought came to him automatically. She was pack beyond the fact that he’d bitten her, that she had been his first. Even humans if allowed to spend the amount of time with wolves that she had could be assimilated into the pack. Before all this, before the mess the fire created, she was a part of his family. Biting her changed nothing, only made it official and visible to any wolf with a sense of smell._

_Back then she’d been a sister to him, equal in rank, but now he was her Alpha, for a second time, he was an Alpha, however regrettable the means of attaining that power had been. And now his Beta had been stolen from him._

_At least with the boy, he’d made the decision himself. He resisted every time Peter compelled him to come. He’d never had the chance to see if Aisling was the same, but if she resisted his authority as her Alpha, it would be for a different reason. She wouldn’t do it because she had a pack of friends like the boy did. She would resist because of something else entirely._

_When his fangs broke her flesh and the Alpha spark transferred its power into her, he’d felt an answering push. There was power in her, completely unlike what he recognized in the boy as extraordinary strength of will, and only time could tell how it might manifest, especially if his gut feeling proved to be correct. Something was very wrong with the “help” Aisling was getting, wherever she was._

_But if Peter knew anything, if he believed in anything, it would be in the power of Beacon Hills. Even if Candice Jasper didn’t intend to return, it would happen. Over a matter of days, weeks, months, or years, Aisling would find her way to Beacon Hills._

_The day that happened, Peter would be ready for it. He owed her that much. Being a born wolf meant he hadn’t undergone the same changes Aisling might have already gone through, or worse yet, still had to go through, but he had the knowledge to coach her through the experience anyway and a ragtag pack to help. Even he had that much._

_Aside from the gut-wrenching feeling in his gut, the link between Alpha and Beta was too weak now for him to project far enough to find where Aisling had been relocated. Even if he had managed to locate her, he wouldn’t be able to retrieve her himself. The Jaspers were still dangerous. He knew the extent of their lineage and their connection to the Argent hunter clans. Besides, if she still lived, the rest of the family had to have been left in the dark regarding her condition. They obeyed their little Code much more harshly when it came to some aspects of the supernatural, and suicide was preferable to lycanthropy any day. Going to her himself would get them both killed, and he hadn’t let himself roast for a human kid for nothing._

_No, he’d have to wait. As if he hadn’t done enough of that already._

* * *

_A pair of crows black as midnight perched on opposite corners of the chain link fence barring access to the old stone bridge. Cold and damp, the earth seeped through the suede sides of her dainty little oxford flats. Hair tied back with a silk ribbon the color of a summer sky just before nightfall, the swallow-tailed tips cut at her face as they flapped in the breeze._

_With steps that were slow with deliberation more than caution, she moved through the fallen leaves as gently as a doe might tread through the brush past a hunter’s blind. Not a sound beyond her footsteps to betray her, she kept absolutely silent even after she first entered the water of the stream beneath the stone. Until she stood waist deep in the icy depths, she’d kept quiet, but now the sharp clang of the bead inside the spray can drumming against the can’s inside sent a murder of ravens skyward. The sound bounced around the underside of the bridge, magnifying the disturbance into a full uproar._

_On autopilot, her hand moved of its own accord. The motions started out small, scribblings of spirals on the moss creeping upwards from the earth along the rough surface, but with each passing moment, she walked from one side to the other repeating the pattern until her work was finished._

_The can fell comparatively quietly to the streambed, slipped right out of her hand before she followed suit and dropped to her knees, letting the stream seep into the sleeves of her woolen cardigan. She took no notice of the temperature difference, but with the coming dawn, the cold would soon become a blessing in itself._

_Her breaths shortened to rasping gasps as she regained a semblance of clarity until she let herself fall completely into the stream’s embrace. When her head slipped under the surface, whatever spell had drawn her to the Old River Bridge held fast._

_A voice whispering in her ear, a heavy, clammy sensation crawling over her skin, both begging her to move, to break the surface and breathe again, continue the work she started. But her body refused. The water felt too good against her skin to leave just yet, and it gave her a buoyancy that lifted the crushing weight from her chest._

_She could have stayed in the stream for ages if something hadn’t changed her mind for her._

_Sunlight twinkling through the dense forest canopy had been the last clear image in her mind’s eye before she shut her eyes against the burning cold of the running water._

_When she reopened them, her vision had been tinted a furious red, the color itself bleeding into her motions. Vigorously, she pushed herself out of the water, breaking the surface so quickly that her body splashed a shower of water onto the rocks lining the streambed on both sides. The crimson spray paint of the spirals on the bridge face bled scarlet, dripping diluted into the water below._

_Zombie-like she admired her work over her shoulder, her head cocked appreciatively to one side with a clever smirk that looked out of place on her._

_Her blood moved sluggishly in her veins, and her feet were leaden as she made her way back up the banks. She could hear the gurgling of the mud underfoot with a clarity that was new to her. It made her feel alive, so in tune with nature. If not for the vicious scarlet plaguing her vision, she could have enjoyed the sharpness of each leaf against the sky or against the bark, each fiber standing out in perfect detail. Instead, whatever drove her forwards through the low-hanging branches filled her stomach with nausea and a general feeling of ill-will._

_A thin branch suddenly snapped back from nowhere and cut a neat line across her cheek. The blood oozed freely down to her chin where it collected into heavy droplets and fell with small patters against the foliage. Instantly her senses rushed into hyper drive. A bloodlust rekindled that was not her own._

_Her vision narrowed even more until the edges were merely smudges of color._

_How she found the deer she couldn’t be certain. How she killed it was a mystery._

_When she had come to, her left hand had been wrapped around the deer’s throat, already motionless by then. Must have been to restrain the animal while her right hand tore out its beating heart. The wound in the delicate beast’s side was jagged and littered with small twigs and stones from beating against it with a rock to break the ribs. Said rock still sat stained scarlet by her foot. How lucky she was to have broken a rib in such a way that it punctured skin._

_Once the heart was in hand, a voice she had never heard before began to speak to her._

_“The pack divides. The pack dies.”_

_Over and over it whispered to her until she had the words written across a large flat stone close to the carcass. The still heart received a final dedication after she placed it on the stone as well, her hands cupped to carry the fleshy weight, signing the note with a spiral._

_Even as her finger completed the final curve, the shadow tainting her sight began its departure, and a new darkness took its place. The only thing keeping her awake at the ungodly hour having left, she fell unconscious to the forest floor, the gentle incline of the hill proving enough to send her body back down to the riverbank._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that was a very short chapter but I've got the next one lined up. And you get a little reminder of her sleepwalking habits. And I like Peter probably more than I should.


	10. Bite or Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a bad person, uploading so slow, but I've had a crazy first week back at school, and this last weekend I pulled a lot of shifts (do not forget your key if you're working two separate shifts or you'll have to stay for the three hours in between too). SO finally, here's your chapter and I ALSO RAN (and finished) A TOUGH MUDDER LAST SUNDAY!

Ever since the vomiting incident, both Aisling and Scott had been more than a little hesitant about being within arm’s reach of the other lest they have a repeat. If it could be helped, she never would have agreed to meet him, much less without Allison there to act as a buffer.

Chris refused to let her stay with the awkward pair any longer than the drive over to the mountain lake far outside the border of Beacon Hills. Allison would return for them an hour before sunset at the trailhead, but from sunrise on, Scott was stuck with the wolf that was not a wolf.

Aisling hadn’t been too much of a disappointment, all things considered. Scott was hardly the person to go to when it came to training werewolves, but he was the only bitten wolf that Chris Argent knew and seemed to trust. Isaac would have been a better choice. The kid was all smiles and laughs nowadays. Scott could see why Chris had avoided Boyd, the wolf was intimidating even when he didn’t mean to be, and Erica fully embraced her newfound power in all the ways that would bring out the worst in Aisling.

Still, it was slower going than Scott expected. For so long she had been trained to suppress the wolf that bringing it out seemed impossible. Sure, she could enhance any one of her senses, but beyond that, her body constantly decided to shut down on her.

When he shifted in front of her, she hadn’t backed away or flinched in the slightest. She just stood there and shut her eyes. Scott could feel the determination oozing from her pores. It was electrifying how much raw strength had been allowed to build up inside of her, but then it sputtered out and Aisling was down for the count.

Multiple times Allison drove the two of them into the mountains, and Aisling had made as much progress as a snail on a salt-sprinkled race track. Every step forward pushed her two steps farther back. The degree of mental manipulation that had been used on her was terrifying if it could send her into so much pain just for thinking about the wolf.

It was after another fruitless training session that Derek approached Scott. The teenager had just come inside the depot with Stiles still locking up the Jeep outside when the Alpha appeared from the makeshift kitchen. “What the hell are you doing with her, McCall?”

“Well, when Chris Argent tells you to hang out with his niece, you’re not exactly in a position to say _no_. He had wolfsbane on his desk, Derek,” Scott explained shrilly, tossing his backpack into the corner nearest the door.

“What does he think you can do? You’re not even an Alpha.” Derek’s nose crinkled at the thought of Chris choosing a green pup to train someone like Aisling.

“That’s _why_ he wants Scotty boy to do it.” Peter stepped forward from the adjoining room, coffee mug in hand, looking perfectly nonchalant when he leaned against the doorjamb.

“Do what?”

“If you play your cards right, or just push the right buttons with our dear, sweet, little Aisling, she’ll burst like a dam. Everything she’s been repressing will come forward all at once. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If the bite doesn’t turn you, it kills you. Aisling has never once been allowed to accept what she is. From the moment I gave her the bite, they trained her against it. Wolves get stronger for every moon that passes without a transformation. She’s nearly 19 now. Just _imagine_ the raw power waiting inside her.”

“I’m not an Alpha though. What if she’s strong enough to kill me?” Scott asked, and just at that moment Stiles stepped through the doorway looking like he’d just intruded at the worst possible moment.

“First, they vomit. Next, they kill. Girls, these days, huh?” Stiles mumbled, only the wolves collectively decided to ignore him. Normally he might be offended, but they were also oblivious to his filching of Derek’s cookie stash. Which Stiles was not about to bring to their attention.

“That’s probably what he’s hoping for,” Derek commented.

“She doesn’t have a real home here, and she doesn’t have a pack of her own. She’ll be a true Omega when she first turns. In the presence of an Alpha she will either fight to kill the Alpha and gain the pack, or she will submit. Which option do you think she’ll pick?” Peter asked in a sharp tone, his eyes hard as he stared the younger wolf down.

“Submission. She’ll be weaker as an Omega.” The answer came easily to Scott. All the stories Derek had ever told him rang like warning bells. Besides, you never really forget the first time you see a lone wolf getting cut in half.

“Wrong.” Peter set down his mug on the coffee table in front of Stiles pile of empty cookie trays and stalked across the expanse of the room until only six inches separated him from Scott.

“I know how you like to talk to your enemies, coach them into believing it’s better to surrender, to go quietly. But you won’t be able to do that with her. The wolf will consume her until sunrise, maybe longer. You won’t be able to reason with her. She will fight until she kills or is killed. Chris Argent wants you to be the one who forces the change. An Alpha has a claim to authority, to territory. An Omega will not hesitate to challenge an Alpha for that authority if it has nothing to lose. And she doesn’t. If Derek were to force the shift, she would kill him.”

“And you? You’re a Beta now too. Why don’t you just do it?” Stiles piped up, cookie crumbs spilling from the corners of his mouth and onto his shirt front.the

Peter smirked shrewdly and hummed his confidence. “I have just a little bit of Alpha in me from my stint before death _and_ I was the one to bite her. Her wolf will recognize that more than it will recognize my current status. Her uncle fears that it will cause her to become mine. For obvious reasons, he would prefer that not happen.”

At least the ex-Alpha had the sense to look ashamed of himself when he finished speaking.

“We don’t have much time until the next full moon,” Derek cut in. He folded his arms across his chest. “Scott, do you know how to force the change on her?”

Scott shook his head. Stiles shifted on the couch to face the awkward wolf triangle with an expression like he would kill to have a pen and paper to document this moment.

“It’s not something Betas normally do. Forcing the change on someone is an Alpha technique, used to force submission. It carries a significant risk of the submitting wolf refusing and fighting back. Derek’s mother rarely attempted it; she never had a reason to. Having a Beta do it doubles that risk. You lack the authority of a pack to completely force a submission, but it may act as the trigger to wake up her wolf before it breaks her. You cannot fear her even in the slightest and you cannot show _any_ weakness. Her wolf will be all primal instincts. She will attack the _instant_ you falter.”

If everything Peter said was true, Scott wouldn’t stand a chance against her. Training with Derek left him with bruises and gashes that took weeks to fade. If Peter thought Aisling would be strong enough to kill Derek, a Beta like Scott would be little more than a fly to her. Suddenly, Scott’s confidence took a nosedive before he remembered who she was. She was Allison’s cousin, and she was an innocent caught in the crossfire.

He steeled himself with a deep breath. “What do I have to do?”

Derek stuck out his lower jaw and trudged out of the room. He wasn’t going to stick around for this.

While Peter explained everything about forcing a change on another wolf to Scott, Stiles followed the Alpha outside to the front of the depot, his steps echoing against the brick walls.

“Hey, hey, dude, wait up!” Stiles shouted at the half-transformed wolf-man. “What, you gonna leave? Just like that?”

“What Scott’s doing is a suicide mission!” Derek growled. His fangs muffled his words.

“Aisling’s our friend. Of course he’s going to do something stupid to help her. Plus, just because he’s going to be the one forcing the change doesn’t mean we can’t help.”

“ _We_? No, you’re not doing anything. It’s one thing for Scott to do stupid things, but you’re not following him.”

“What, just because he can heal really fast he gets to have all the fun?”

Derek tried to walk it off, but Stiles continued to follow him like an imprinted gosling.

“Go home, Stiles. Make sure your dad eats properly. Forget about Aisling. Let us wolves deal with this.”

“Come on, Der-bear!” Stiles shouted mockingly. “I’ll stay nice and out of the way when it goes down if you’ll just hear me out, all right?”

The glare coming off the Alpha could have boiled an ocean’s worth of water. Or frozen it. That works too.

“Allison’s dad obviously wants as little harm as possible to come to Aisling. Maybe he’s got some werewolf repellant to keep her sedated or at least isolated to a small area. If we could borrow some from him and post a perimeter, even if Scott can’t keep her down, at least the pack can help keep her inside until she cools off.”

“Peter just said that she’d kill an Alpha if confronted with one. Yet you want me to put all my Betas on the line to keep her inside an imaginary circle?”

“Hey, I never said anything about imaginary circles. I mean, some Mountain Ash would definitely improve our chances of a not-massacre happening. You know what, I’m gonna call Deaton, ask if he’s got a spare bag.”

Stiles hadn’t even gotten his phone of his pocket by the time Derek had a hand coiled around his upper arm.

“We have less than two days before the full moon, Stiles. There isn’t enough Ash in the entire state to control what she’s going to become.”

“What about Wolfsbane? We could turn it into a spray. Then you’d really need my help. Scott could do his thing and then I could go in and gas her. Knock her out so you can take her somewhere to sleep it off.”

Derek’s eyes looked hopeful for about a minute. “No. It’s too dangerous for you, and she’d be dead before she’s groggy enough for any of us to take her down.”

Stiles threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine, then what’s your great and wonderful plan? You can’t even face her yourself! She’s going to be set in Operation: Kill the Alpha.”

“Regardless of her strength, she’ll still be an Omega. And it’s my job as the Alpha to protect the pack.”

“Okay, that’s it. I am officially surrounded by idiots. That is the _only_ explanation for . . . for _this_ ,” Stiles huffed and returned to the depot, leaving Derek to wallow in his thoughts in the chill of the night.

If Scott and Derek were intent on getting themselves killed, Stiles would just have to double his efforts to keep them safe, even if it meant going behind their backs. At least Isaac would probably see things his way. The kid was practically in love with the Alpha and Scott; he’d do whatever it took to keep the two of them out of harm’s way. Erica and Boyd would be more difficult to convince. The pair didn’t take quite as well to the idea of pack life. Erica had been independent from the start once she came into her strength, and Boyd had the unavoidable tendency to challenge Derek’s decisions at every turn. Better not get them involved even if the extra pairs of hands would be missed.

Deaton had already texted him back that he’d see what he could do as far as getting more Mountain Ash, but two days’ worth of planning didn’t bode well. Stiles had imagined it working out before, and it had. As long as he believed, he might actually be able to prevent the death of his best friend. Might being the operative word.

* * *

Her body protested every attempt to rise from the comforting embrace of the couch cushions. Aisling had dropped face down into them the second she returned from her foray into the mountains and stayed there for the duration of the night.

Every session with Scott left her aching with a headache so strong she couldn’t stop her stomach contents from pouring out into the toilet. They had an unspoken agreement to avoid all mention of her past therapy sessions. It only made her head hurt worse when she considered the idea that she’d been trained to feel pain to repress her natural abilities. It hadn’t been enough to erase the memory of Kate’s murderous plot; her mother had gone one step further and made it that much harder for Aisling to embrace the truth.

So far, the most she’d managed was lengthening her nails to points so sharp she no longer needed her metal nail caps. Even that had left her breathless. She suspected Scott had been sharing her progress with the others. Derek and Peter Hale mostly. Scott came to her with a more morose expression than the last, like her lack of progress was a bad omen. The other wolves obviously weren’t as easily satisfied as Scott.

The wolf inside her seemed to know it too. Her chest constricted painfully with a longing to run each time Scott shifted. Her limbs quivered, trying to imitate the motions, but she couldn’t push herself past the blossoming pain behind her eyes. Animalistic noises slipped forth from her lips more often nowadays, growls and snarls, and she struck out with a clawed hand at Allison occasionally when the other girl snuck up from behind. Luckily for Allison, that was as far as the transformation went, but it drained her more each time.

Getting up every morning became a chore, and eating became less and less appealing the more food she was forced to expel at the end of the day.

Aisling had shed ten pounds since she started training with Scott, her curls had lost some of their bounce, and her eyes had gained the permanent addition of dark bags under them. When she came to Beacon Hills, she’d been unnerved by the howling in the woods, but at least then she could have said she was strong enough to handle anything. Now she wouldn’t have been surprised if a strong gust of wind knocked her down.

“Dad, you can’t force her to meet with Scott anymore.”

Ah, Allison had stepped up to defend her once again. Aisling purposefully clawed her way up the couch cushions until she could rest her chin on the top of it. Enhancing her hearing had long since ceased to bother her.

“None of this is helping her. Trying to force her to be what she is, it’s killing her!”

“What her mother and Kate did to her will kill her first. If the change goes through her all at once, she won’t be able to survive the rush. Whatever she can do before then increases her chances of making it through the night.”

Good to know everyone thought she was going to die.

She hissed in a breath with every step until she stood in the open doorway between the kitchen and the formal dining room.

“Ash, you have to know that I’m just trying to fix what was done to you,” Chris immediately tried to explain.

Allison kept her eyes off to the side, but Aisling could see the tenseness in her shoulders. She was toying with her lower lip with her fingers, not quite biting her nails.

“No, I get it, I do.” Aisling winced inwardly at how weak her voice sounded to her own ears. “Is this why your wife killed herself when she was bitten? Did she know it was going to be this painful?”

Had Aisling known the effect her words would have, she would have chosen them better, but they needed to be said. Allison brought both hands to cover her mouth, but she didn’t cry or make a noise. Beside her, her father fisted his hands but kept his silence.

“No.”

He didn’t speak for a time after that, but Aisling remained in the doorway. “ _No_ , what?”

“She didn’t kill herself for the pain. What you’re going through is different. Your pain is the product of your mother’s attempt to hide the wolf from you. Imagine a bottle of soda. Agitate it too much and the second the pressure has a way to escape, there won’t be anything pretty about it. That’s what’s happening to you.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“That’s something only the Hales can answer.”

Aisling nodded, but the motion forced her eyelids to slide half closed and she didn’t have the energy to open them again. “Thought I wasn’t supposed to see them.”

“Your wolf is becoming more aware of itself and of them. It could react to Peter differently than it does with Scott.”

“You can still try Isaac. He’s a Beta too,” Allison offered.

Chris just rubbed his eyes and groaned. “Call him. Make sure he doesn’t come with either of the Hales. I’m going to go to work.”

Aisling protested, “It’s a Sunday.”

He just shrugged on his coat and continued out the door as if she’d never said a thing. When Aisling turned to face Allison, the girl was tapping away on her phone screen, hopefully texting Isaac and not Scott. Aisling didn’t think she could handle meeting him again. She was already beginning to associate him with pain and vomiting more than was healthy for a decent friendship. Still, she’d never met Isaac so she didn’t know how she felt about meeting him in her current state.

* * *

Finally Lady Luck seemed to be on her side.

Meeting with Isaac had been nothing short of a breath of fresh air. From his golden curls to his dimpled grin, he was a bucket of happiness that settled her nerves the instant their hands touched. All the pain plaguing her muscles faded in that moment, and her head felt clearer than it had since she woke up.

“Whatever you’re doing, don’t stop,” she mumbled dumbly as she led him by the hand into the living room.

He took a seat on the couch and gently pressed both hands on her shoulders to force her to sit on the floor between his long, gangly legs. Instead of immediately answering her question, he wrapped his lean arms around her neck, holding them lightly against her collarbone while he set his palms flat against her upper arms. The close position brought his head to rest against hers, their curls tangling together loosely.

Aisling expected her body to tense at the increased and unexplained contact, but she merely relaxed into it, reveling in the companionship and serenity.

“All wolves can take away pain. The first thing I learned after I got the bite from Derek was how to smell moods.” He laughed lightly to himself, his breath tickling the back of her ear. “From the moment Allison introduced us at the library, all I could smell was your pain. Obviously Scott hasn’t really tuned in to moods yet or he wouldn’t get into so much trouble with Allison all the time.”

She smiled and nudged her head against his. “This is the best I’ve felt since I came to Beacon Hills, you know.”

“Do you feel well enough that I can stop? Peter’s the one that suggested taking your pain first. He’s a bit of a jerk sometimes, but he’s basically the only expert we have outside of Deaton.”

Immediately, she tensed in his arms. Slow movements at first, then more forcefully, she forced herself free of his embrace. He looked like a beaten puppy when she looked at him over her shoulder, his flushed pink lips parted in an open pout.

It was strange, dealing with the new information about Peter and Derek Hale. Isaac had carelessly let it slip while they were still in the library, and it took all of two seconds for the realization to hit home. The werewolf and the huntress barely managed to get Aisling out of the library before they were all banned for good.

Peter had done more than keep up the pretense that she was totally human. He’d completely glossed over the fact that he was basically responsible for changing that fact.

Finding out that the surviving Hales were wolves too explained the strange flashes of color that Derek pulled on her that night at the Hale house. According to Isaac, it was because Derek was an Alpha. He could go from hazel to red at a moment’s notice, but he generally tried to reserve it for dominance displays.

Still, the Hales and the Argents were meant to have a truce of some sort, one that had been extended to include Aisling. Otherwise she never should have been in that house. Even back then, back before Kate set the families firmly against each other, no hunters would have been allowed into the dwelling place of a wolf pack for any reason. Yet Aisling had been allowed entry not even just that once, but multiple times beforehand if anything Peter passed along through Isaac was true.

“I- I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

She ignored him in favor of curling into a ball in the loveseat opposite him. She could hear her own heartbeat racing inside her ribcage, and she knew he could hear it just as clearly as if he were beside her. He had probably felt it spike at the first mention of Peter’s name.

“I don’t like him either, but he knows things, knows more about how werewolves work than even Derek does. You need to see him before the change happens. There’s only so much that Scott and I can coach you through.”

“I don’t want any change to happen. I just want to go back to Bixby, and I _hate_ Bixby, so I can ignore all of this. Peter never should have just let me die.”

Isaac was halfway to her before a buzzing in his pocket forced him to stop midstep. First he withdrew a ring of keys, then a few crumpled dollar bills, a handful of loose chain, and then finally a battered, scratched, but still functional cell phone.

Aisling had expected it to be a routine notification, but definitely not for the message to be directed at her. The werewolf stepped around the arm of the loveseat so he could hold the phone over her face, its illuminated screen opened up to a text message from Peter.

_“I thought the wolves of my family could survive on their own strength. A weak little human like you needed at least a snowball’s chance.”_

“What? How does he know what we’re talking about? Where the hell is that creep?” she shouted, flying out of the chair and to the window, eyes scanning the backyard meticulously.

Another buzz and Isaac raced back over to her side.

_“Too slow, sweetheart.”_

“Asshole.”

_“That’s rude for a lady.”_

“And that’s sexist. Now stop eavesdropping.”

This was getting ridiculous. The buzzing from Isaac’s phone stopped for some time, but Aisling was hesitant to believe it had stopped for good. The poor kid didn’t even bother putting it back into his bottomless pocket, instead leaving it on the coffee table in the center of the room on top of a small stack of hunting and housekeeping magazines.

Against all odds, not another sound came from the phone for the next hour and a half while Isaac attempted to actually do good by Aisling and teach her something.

Periodically he would pause and take her pain whenever her response times started to slow. Healing her between practice attempts had improved her skills considerably since she’d started out with Scott. She had a solid grasp on hybrid transformations including growing claws on both hands and feet, fangs, and lengthening her ears. Her eyes had changed color as well once she had pushed herself to hold the shift for longer than five minutes at a time.

She felt it, the rush of power and awareness that came when she crossed over that line. The animal she’d been holding back had just taken a deep breath and could have howled with pleasure if she’d allowed it, but she could still feel the sharp pinpricks of pain tingling up her spine and behind her eyelids, the fragmented remnants of her mother’s regimen of control.

When she turned her eyes to Isaac, half-shifted himself, golden eyes aglow, she felt something shift inside her. A rumbling growl escaped her throat and she lowered her body slowly to a crouch, her legs moving sinuously as she took several steps back around him.

Her wolf was still restrained, but its instincts bled out into her actions. Seeing the Beta so alone tempted her to strike, something about having him removed from his pack.

“Aisling?” he asked cautiously, reaching a clawed hand to wave in front of her no doubt dazed expression.

Like a viper, she struck first, fangs sinking into the skin of his hand before he could retract the limb.

Before she could even blink and realize what she’d done, he was on top of her, snarling savagely as he pinned her to the carpet. To her credit, she fought just as fiercely to get free, though the shift was already fading. He held her in place until she returned completely. Only when she was panting and completely motionless did he rise to help her onto her feet, his hand already healed.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his shirt.

“I have to let them know what happened.”

He pushed her away until they had an arm’s length between them so he could reach past her for his phone. His fingertips had barely brushed across the surface before the phone vibrated multiple times in such rapid succession that it tumbled right off the table’s edge.

“I’m just going to go ahead and assume that those are all from Peter,” Aisling mumbled, wringing her hands in front of her.

She couldn’t even look at Isaac now that she’d just attacked him. Between him and Scott, he had gotten so much more progress. He’d taken her pain and let her focus on learning to master the wolf. Thanks to him, she hadn’t vomited once yet. And then she went and bit him because the stupid demon inside her told her to. He had been weak and she had been strong, felt strong enough to take a life.

His curls danced when he nodded, absently chewing on his thumbnail, as he flicked through each message with his other hand. His forehead creased the longer he read, and Aisling really hadn’t expected quite so many messages.

“Um, so, I don’t think you’re going to see another of us until your uncle decides to force the full shift,” he said after some time.

“ _Full shift_? What’s a full shift? I thought that’s what I just did!”

“You didn’t allow the wolf full control. That’s the full shift. I can control myself enough that it doesn’t happen often, and I guess you can too to some extent because it’s never happened to you, but that’s beside the point. Either way, you have to go through a full shift at some point. The bite either kills you or turns you, but you’ve been trained to resist it for so long that Peter thinks it might still kill you.”

“But I felt _good_ , I felt strong. If you or Scott could just take some of the pain, I could do it.”

He shook his head. “It won’t work. Taking your pain like I did today will help you transform, but after that, you’re kind of . . . a loose cannon. You bit me just now, but that was a partial shift, only five minutes long. It’s going to be worse when you have even less control.”

Aisling shifted her weight to the balls of her feet and pored over the fallen contents of Isaac’s pockets from their little shuffle. “What did Peter tell you, exactly?”

“Well, first, he told me to get out and keep away from you. Then, he told me that he doesn’t agree with your uncle’s decision to wait till the full moon or to have Scott do it. The full moon will only increase your strength as a wolf and take away whatever control you might have over it. And Scott’s a Beta like me but untied. I have a pack that can give me strength, him not so much. Going against you with no back up, kinda not an ideal situation for Scott. Peter wants to be the one to do it because of his relation to you.”

“Just because he saved my life doesn’t mean I’m obligated to follow his every whim. He kept up a charade around me just like my mother did! He treated me like a child!”

“He only wanted to get close to you so he could assess you. I know that sounds stupid, but it’s true. Peter needed to get a read on you. Meeting you at the coffee shop had been his first opportunity since you left Beacon Hills to test if you were immune to the bite or something else happened.”

“Immune? I thought it was kill or turn only?”

“That’s what we thought until Lydia didn’t turn. Peter bit her too, but that’s a completely different story.”

“Can I hear it? Who’s Lydia?” She spun a quarter across the tabletop with a flick of her nail.

“Aisling, stop trying to change the subject. It’s not easy acting as Peter’s messenger right now. You have to know that he feels guilty for getting you involved. Finding out that you’d been brainwashed against turning wasn’t what he expected when Stiles explained why Scott smelled like vomit. You’re in trouble, Aisling,” he slowed his speech minutely to watch the quarter drop noiselessly onto the carpet, “ and Peter thinks you’ll stand a better chance if you let him force the shift the night before the full moon.”

“Then tell me why my uncle doesn’t want him to do it. Obviously he would have his reasons.”

Isaac bit his lip and ruffled his hair with a groan. “Peter once killed his niece to become an Alpha. Here, just read this message. The one on the top, yeah.”

_“If she reacts to me and her wolf decides to accept me as her Alpha, that will be enough to solidify my position as an Alpha again. Should that happen, we might have quite the little problem on our hands. Or option two, her wolf reacts to me but_ rejects _me like a certain Beta we both know, I would be forced to kill her.”_

She snorted. “And if I rejected him, what are my chances of killing him instead?”

Isaac legitimately laughed at that. “With his track record, you don’t stand much of a chance. He’s survived death twice now, the fire and getting his throat slashed.” He took back the phone and scrolled down to another message. “But there’s a small chance that he can help you anyway.”

_“If I can get my claws into her neck, I might be able to access her memories and bring her out of the wolf’s control. Assuming Kate didn’t screw around too badly. Her head might be a minefield and we could both suffer, but it might not. Ask her if I can try it tonight. She doesn’t need to shift for me to do it. It will only hurt for a second and I promise I’ll take her pain.”_

“If that wasn’t the worst lie ever told, I might be inclined to trust him enough to let him try,” she scoffed and passed back the phone. “How do you manage it? I mean, how can you look past the fact that he’s murdered people and bitten more? How can you still trust him to let him live?”

He exhaled shakily. “Honestly, I trust in Derek. He knows that Peter has more value alive. He’s the last surviving piece of his family and not counting you, the only survivor of the Hale house fire. Peter brought himself back to life because he knows so much about dark magic. Derek sees the value in that, and I just try to be okay with that. It’s not ideal, obviously, but at least we’re not fighting against him anymore.”

“I don’t know that I can do that. I can’t let him into my head. Even without Kate’s influence, it’s probably already a minefield now that I remember the fire.”

“It’s not that bad, really, letting one of them into your head. Peter feels responsible for you. He won’t hurt you.”

“Why do I feel like I’ve had this conversation before?”

Isaac grinned and shrugged. “I’d better let you get some rest, Aisling. Less than two days before the full moon, you know. If you decide to let Peter try, just send a message to Stiles and he’ll get it to Derek and Peter. If you’d rather listen to your uncle,” he paused to nudge the leg of the coffee table with his shoe, “well, I hope everything works out. Derek won’t let us near you when Scott forces the change.”

The hair on the back of her neck and along her arms rose like electrified when she hugged him around the waist a final time. A growl was already forming at the back of her throat at the Earth-scent on his clothes.

“I hate this,” she groaned through the door, the corners of her lips rising at the sound of the chuckle on the other side.

From the get go, Aisling never expected Beacon Hills to be a home away from home, but she hadn’t thought it would be the death of her either. For once Bixby seemed like heaven on Earth from all the retired folks to the bingo parlors to the mediocre 500-student-max high school. But that was a time since past, and if she ever got to see her mother again, it would be too soon.

On the flip side, she could use a call to her father right about now. She didn’t doubt he’d sympathize with her or be able to explain everything to her. Now all his conversations with Uncle Argent made sense. While her mother had always warned Victoria and Kate not to trust her around anything too fragile, much less around Allison, her father encouraged playtime, promising that Aisling would never hurt anyone if she could just be trusted to be herself.

Maybe that would have saved her all this trouble. Saved them all the trouble of trying to help her. If having a werewolf in a family of hunters hadn’t been such a death sentence, maybe her mother wouldn’t have tried so hard to brainwash the wolf out of her.

You embrace the wolf. You don’t fear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got a 10K this weekend so I'll be trying to run at least MWF if not all week (I'd really like to get another achievement medal on Zombies, Run), but there should still be a new chapter up by Sunday.  
> Hope you enjoyed this one!


	11. Ring Around the Rosy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When it's this far down to the wire, hope is but a fancy. The reality is much worse.

If anyone lacked the sense to know not to approach her, they might have asked what possessed her to bring her to that particular doorstep.

As it was though, she was perfectly alone. The streets glistened in the dim street lights from the poorly tuned sprinkler system of the apartment complex across the way. It didn’t help either that Aisling had already been soaked through to the bone from a late fall rain on her way over. When the alarm beeped on the front gate, she flinched out into the sidewalk at the sharpness of the sound. The backs of her knees protested when she started the hike up the chipping stone stairs that snaked up the ace of the apartment, the coarse material of her denim jeans chaffing the wet skin.

Two hours earlier, she’d made the call. Not two minutes later she got the text. His address and a four-digit code to get inside the complex. Now it was deep into the course of the night, and her legs were carrying her closer to the door of the guy she’d been trying to avoid for the better part of Allison’s school semester.

Isaac had left Stiles’ phone number on the fridge door in the form of a folded up coffee shop receipt so she could reference it later. The reality though was that she was operating on a ticking time-bomb of a timeline with little room for last minute adjustments.

Yet for whatever reason, she’d opted for even the slightest improvement to her chances of surviving this.

“Stiles said you were coming. I don’t know why I expected you to take a _car_ ,” he said when he stepped back to let her inside, his eyes casually taking in her disheveled appearance.

Maybe under better circumstances she would have cared enough to at least glare at him, but in her current condition, she just dropped her body across what she hoped was a very expensive couch and let the water and her damp stink seep into the cushions.

“Not even going to offer me a drink?” she mumbled from the couch.

Glass in hand, he dropped into a squat in front of her and used his free hand to prod her into facing him before he passed the glass into her noticeably cold-pink hands. “Christ, Aisling, did you walk all the way here? This is in the heart of downtown Beacon Hills. You don’t exactly live at what most people would call ‘walking distance.’”

Her throat burned even as the liquid coursed down her throat and strived to cool it. “So nice to know someone cares about my well-being. Yes, I did walk, but it was nothing. I’ve gone farther before.” _When I’m sleep-walking._

He looked at her inquisitively. She was so different from how he remembered her, all fire and freedom and the swiftness and strength of the river behind the Hale house, but he had to realize that she’d been through an extraordinary hardship that still held her fast in its clutches. She had every right to be irate.

“There’s only one reason for you to be here, but I won’t do anything if you’re not absolutely sure,” he offered, standing once more at his full height.

Aisling had never felt smaller than she did in that moment. In a prone position, face down with the back of her neck already bared for him, her stomach rolled and her throat tightened to the point that the edges of her vision started to lose clarity. If it was just her wolf reacting to the Alpha-like intensity with which Peter regarded her, she couldn’t tell for certain. She just knew she didn’t like it.

Immediately she sat up and matched his gaze with a weak half-smirk.

“There are less risqué ways of phrasing it, you know.”

“But that would take all the fun out of it,” he pouted, but it didn’t hold quite as much sarcasm as it ought to have had.

“I know what I came here for. You need to get into my head while I still have enough presence of mind to keep myself under wraps. I feel like two casualties are better than how many I might cause tomorrow.”

“Well, if you can bear to be optimistic, there won’t be any casualties tonight, or any other night, if all goes well.”

“And if you were a _real_ optimist, you wouldn’t have felt the need to add ‘ _if all goes well_.’”

When Aisling had first found herself standing at the street corner of Peter’s downtown apartment, she had expected it would be a get-in, get-out, very quick affair, but Peter appeared determined to make it anything but. With each glass of apple cider (because she had yet to reach the legal drinking age and Peter said Stiles thought he was enough of a creep without thinking he was an enabler too), a little bit more of her apprehension melted away. The sweet, bubbly liquid did help to smooth her lips, chapped from her chewing in nervousness.

Only after she had relaxed completely into the seat with her legs tucked underneath her, did Peter broach the subject again.

His voice was soft, not unlike a caress in the back of her mind. Yet instead of bringing comfort, her muscles tensed and every hair on the back of her neck stood to attention.

“Your heart is racing, Aisling. I need you to calm down.”

Her golden eyes locked with his before sweeping down to his unmoving lips.

“No, no, keep your eyes on me.”

She forced herself to drag her eyes upwards. Gulping only made her wish for more cider.

“Just breathe.”

_Just breathe._

Oh, she could have laughed if she’d had enough air in her lungs to make a sound beyond a whimper.

How many times she’d heard those words couldn’t hold a candle to how many times she’d repeated them to herself. And all for nothing if her track record was anything to go by.

_Just breathe, and it’ll all be okay._

False hopes and empty promises, that’s all they’d ever amounted to.

So lost in her musings, she didn’t even have time to scream when Peter’s claws found their way into the soft tissue of the back of her neck. Immediately, the monster within surged to life, clawing at the skin of the arm wrapped tight across her chest and the arm behind her.

Visions of darkness and blood swam before her eyes and violent waves of pain reminiscent of the electroshock therapy coursed through every fiber of her muscles, making her dance like a puppet on a string. She relived the dream walks into the woods, excursions that never left her to be found by the authorities, others that she would have given anything to keep hidden away.

Red eyes, bright and burning. Red eyes in the shadows. A voice in the dark. Whispers in the night.

_The pack divides. The pack dies._

There was a resistance, a foggy quality to the apparitions now. Looking through them now gave her a headache, her mind trying to filter through the images while the images themselves refused to move any faster than a snail’s pace.

The Earth-smell hit her suddenly, and her senses were overrun by all the sights and smells of the woods, running with a pack. Only vaguely could she recall having done it once before. Faceless, naked forms appeared all around her, long strides carrying them over any obstacle in their path, their laughter distorted grotesquely in the corrupted memory. The figures blended together into a dark shadow that bled with warmth and comfort. So close, she could nearly touch the wavering … _thing_ in front of her, but it shifted subtly away from her, the edges blurring and fading and swaying back and forth until she recognized it.

_A wolf._

She wanted to run with it. She needed to run with it. She stepped forward, expecting her other foot would follow, but it remained stuck in the dark space of her mind. The unstable image of the wolf didn’t bother to wait and bolted ahead of her until it left an impressive gap of only blackness between them.

The howl that should have reached her ears when it threw back its head came across as a scream all too human, contorted with an agony that sent her heart into an uproar. Her lungs simply couldn’t get enough oxygen and the air felt a thousand and one degrees too hot.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. She wasn’t meant to remember this.

A fresh spike of electricity rocked her body upwards, straight off the couch so that her weight was supported only by the tips of her toes and the claws still lodged in the back of her neck.

Dimly, she was aware of a sharp snap by her ear, but her will had already deserted her. The strength sapped from her body, she let her weight sink into the seat of the couch.

The whole time Peter panted roughly with his hands planted behind him on the now bare counter to balance himself. Amber liquid dribbled onto the linoleum tiles though neither wolf seemed to notice it, especially the one who’d shelled out the money to create such a collection of spirits. The corners of his eyes were wrinkled more than an old woman’s from how tightly he squeezed his eyes shut.

By the time he got his breathing under control, Aisling had regained enough consciousness to curl her body back into the couch cushions so that she could tuck her face into the corner between the armrest and the back.

His hand trembled, either out of fear or exhaustion, when he reached out for her shoulder. The skin halfway up his forearm appeared bright pink in the warm lighting and only slightly swollen now. She flinched before he even made contact.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, her voice too soft for a normal human to hear.

He wished he could lie to put her at ease. He didn’t even know what he preferred at that point. It would have made things so much simpler if he could just say _yes, he’d fixed everything and she could go back to her vague notions of normalcy_. Only that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

Instead, he pursed his lips and moved back to sit across from her once more. He perched on the edge of his seat to bridge the gap between them though she continued to press herself farther away in the limited space the couch offered.

“No, I didn’t, but there’s something—,” Peter started to answer before he censured himself, rubbing the back of his hand against his stubble. “I need to make some calls, and you need to go home.”

Aisling couldn’t even find the energy to argue. However, when she struggled to shift her weight around so she could sit up, Peter stopped her immediately.

“I said I’d make some calls. Don’t move.”

Mutely, she nodded and lowered her body back onto the cushions while Peter disappeared into another room. The more she focused on following his footsteps, the more her eyes started to burn. He moved all the way to the far end of the apartment. He only would’ve moved that far if he was making a call she wasn’t supposed to hear. And if that was the case, as curious as she was and as much as she hated to admit it, listening in now wasn’t worth the discomfort.

She trusted Isaac, who trusted Derek, who trusted Peter. She could have been in worse hands.

* * *

Her hair was relentless that morning, refusing to remain in the bun tied at the nape of her neck. Uncle Chris forced her out of bed at the crack of dawn for a weak breakfast of buttered toast and drove her and Allison out to the reserve far out of the way of Beacon Hills.

The wolves would arrive later separately.

In the meantime, they had preparations to get underway.

She felt them approaching before she smelled or heard them. With the strong wind coursing over the clearing, the sound of their voices reached her all too quickly and the cloying Earth-scent sent her stomach into a downward spiral.

Deaton arrived first, officially. On his suggestion, the wolves stayed back behind the tree line while he and Stiles together constructed a line of Mountain Ash at the edge. Aisling had expected someone of a more obvious strength to be in charge of warding the clearing against her escape, but she could feel an underlying power to him that instantly put her on edge. The way he regarded her was like a farmer eying a predator that was coming to close to his flock. While not a present danger, turning his back to her for one second could produce a devastating end. She loathed the thought of being seen in such a light, but the growls escaping her did nothing to dissuade him.

“Under normal circumstances, werewolves cannot cross lines of Mountain Ash. It takes great mental fortitude and force of will to get past the protective wards, and it will exact a toll on you should you attempt it. I know you’ll probably forget all of this when the change happens, but maybe something or someone will get through to you,” he spoke in even, measured tones, his eyes never leaving hers for even a moment.

He just watched her out of the corner of his eye as he followed an imaginary line, the black powder slipping through the hole cut into the bottom of the large burlap bag. Several identical bags were piled up just outside the circle against the trunk of the nearest tree. It must have taken a ton of begging to collect that much ash. From what little Aisling understood about the situation, the stuff was difficult to come by.

She tossed her head so that her heavy curls fell over the right half of her face. “And if I break it anyway?”

“The pack is wearing respirators and armed with wolfsbane to disorient you. Your uncle and your cousin are both on the perimeter with wolfsbane bullets, not Nordic Blue, but it’s enough to slow you down.”

She nodded slowly, but her hands tightened around her upper arms, warding off an invisible chill that seemed to affect only her. “And Scott? He’ll be in the circle with me. If I attack him, what happens then? Are they going to risk opening the circle to let him out?”

At that point Deaton failed to have a response ready for her. Instead he opted to leave the verdict open to someone else. “I guess I will leave that decision to Derek’s judgment and Scott’s. If Scott thinks he can handle you, then the circle will be closed. Otherwise, Derek’s the strongest as the Alpha, but he’s also at the most risk because of it. Truthfully, I don’t know how this will play out. In all my years serving as a Druid, I have never dealt with someone in your situation. I just have to hope that your strength of will can get you through this.”

“Do you believe I can?”

He stood and stopped the flow of ash with a hand. He didn’t speak for a moment, and when he did, her heart dropped into her stomach.

“If I had to say anyone had the willpower to survive this, it would have to be Scott. I’ve only just met you and maybe you _can_ survive this, but I don’t know that. Scott has human family and friends that he calls his pack. He doesn’t need other werewolves to give him strength like Derek or Peter do. If you have something to anchor you to this world, I don’t doubt that you’ll make it through to the morning. Otherwise, it’s really just up to fate.”

Aisling really would have liked to have been satisfied with that answer, but all it did was dig a deeper grave. Compared to her one day with Isaac, Scott seemed like an idiot, too in tune with his human side to help her efficiently, but with good intentions no matter what. The kid would give both an arm and a leg to his friends if necessary, but Aisling didn’t have anyone like that except her dad or Uncle Chris. Yet even they had kept secrets from her and they could’ve tried harder to keep Candice and Kate from going completely insane and thinking that ignorance was bliss. Allison had been kinder to her, but the long years apart put a distance between them that their short time together still had yet to fully repair.

Long story short, she still didn’t have anyone she could call pack, she didn’t have an anchor, and she was probably going to do some serious damage to someone tonight if she even survived long enough.

This was certainly shaping up to be an eventful morning.

* * *

Against Stiles’ hour-long protestations the night before, Erica and Boyd had both been brought in as extra hands to guard the perimeter around the long-time-bitten, first-time-turning wolf. Neither one looked particularly happy to be dragged into the mess, and Stiles, for one, tried his damnedest to keep his mouth shut around them.

But it was just painful when Boyd couldn’t keep his opinions to himself.

Honestly, he was just trying to mind his own business, checking that the respirators and gas  tanks were all functioning properly when the wolf decided he wasn’t digging the silence.

“It would be much simpler to kill her. Her family has been after our kind from the start. She doesn’t deserve all this effort.”

“Kate’s dead. She already paid for the fire. The fire that, coincidentally, _she_ was inside,” Stiles corrected the bulky werewolf in a heartbeat, gesturing with both arms at Aisling just chilling in the center of the circle.

Well, to be fair, chilling wouldn’t be quite the right word. She looked like she was about the barf from the way she had her arms wrapped around her middle, and Deaton’s face just about screamed in affirmation of Stiles’ guess. Obviously the nerves were set incredibly high.

“That doesn’t mean we should go out of our way for one person. Who is she to us? Let her shift by herself and see what happens. The pack shouldn’t have to be involved like this. It’s a waste of time.”

“Sweetheart,” Erica cooed from Boyd’s right, sidling over with intimate familiarity in every touch that made Stiles feel just a little like an intruder, “just be glad you’re not inside the circle with her. I know you could handle her, but I don’t want to see you roughed up by anyone other than me.”

And okay, now Stiles definitely felt like an intruder on a very, very, very personal moment.

When he turned to move away from them, he could see Aisling and Deaton looking his way. Of course, Aisling had never met Erica or Boyd before, and now they had both come to see the show. Stiles didn’t need to be a werewolf to sense Aisling’s discomfort. It was one thing to have your friends help you, even people you’ve only known for a couple of days, but it’s beyond weird having complete strangers see you have a nuclear meltdown. Yep, Stiles could definitely sympathize. He’d have to talk to her later tonight before they got the change underway.

The pair muttered enough sweet nothings to each other that Stiles had to retreat to Derek’s self-assigned post on a small hill downwind and farther behind the tree line to keep himself out of Aisling’s sensory reach. The Alpha had dressed incredibly casually for a romp in the woods, almost like he expected the worst to happen, like he could already tell that he’d need to intervene. After all his whining about how Scott was committing himself to a suicide mission, Derek looked more resigned to death than Scott did. Then again, Scott had a tendency to look happy-go-lucky even going into a chemistry pop quiz.

The white cotton of the shirt under the Alpha’s un-patterned denim wash button down stretched tight against his chest when he stretched his arms out behind him. Dark jeans and a pair of black boots of a more work boot design completed the look. Efficient and simple, Stiles could dig it. At least he didn’t have to deal with being burdened by the weight of heavy sweaters and multiple shirts like humans were. Or just Stiles.

Stiles could feel his teeth chattering whenever he couldn’t find someone to talk to and keep his mouth running for warmth. Honestly, being out this early to prepare had better be worth it in the end. He didn’t doubt it, but you never really knew with these wolves. Scott was supposed to be his best friend, and now he was something that Stiles couldn’t completely share in. He was definitely against getting a bite for himself. He just needed to know that he hadn’t gotten up this early to watch someone die. Aisling’s safety all rode on Scott being able to get out and close the circle behind him before shit really went to hell.

“Were you just going to stand there or were you coming to say something?” Derek’s voice brought Stiles’ completely insane train of thought to a stop.

Stiles’ head jerked up comically and his mouth gaped like a fish’s struggling to breathe on dry land. “Um, yeah, yeah, just, you know, you look like you’re planning on fighting Aisling. Even though Peter, Deaton, and Mr. Argent are all very against the idea.”

“It’s my job as the Alpha to protect the pack. Whatever she is to Allison, she’s still a threat to me. I’ll take her down if I need to.”

“Look at her, Derek. Look at Scott. Look at Isaac. They can handle her together, and Peter could project onto her again from a distance if it came down to it. Between you and Scott, he’s got a better chance at getting out alive. No offense to whatever machismo-ego-thing you’ve got going on.”

Derek glared out of the corner of his eye but kept his body facing the female wolf in the clearing.

Stiles followed his gaze and cocked his head to the side. Her head lifted from where she’d rested her chin on the tops of her knees. She was looking straight at them, but he knew the circle of ash kept her from hearing them. Or it should have. He didn’t really know how it affected them, just that Scott found it mildly annoying.

“Dude, you fought tooth and nail to make a pack for yourself. Don’t get yourself killed when everyone’s just here to help. It’s a two-way street, right? You get your power from them and they get power from you. So stop being so tense. You’re starting to worry Isaac.”

The puppy-wolf had been pacing non-stop the last time Stiles tried to talk to him. A track had been worn into the dirt where he’d been posted on the northern point of the clearing. All attempts to talk him down amounted to nothing. Isaac couldn’t stop muttering about how he couldn’t understand why anyone could harm one of their own so willingly.

Of course Stiles knew where he was coming from. Isaac’s past was a bit of a sore subject, and seeing Aisling suffering from a different kind of mental abuse must have been torturous to watch.

Derek huffed and crossed his arms. “What do you think will happen?”

Stiles flailed his arms uselessly when he shrugged. “Why is that the question of the day? I mean, I know we’ve got a ton of things to expect with Ash, but it’s not like any one of us actually knows her or knows about things like her. Your guess is seriously as good as mine.”

Derek raised an eyebrow at the familiar name, and Stiles had to pause his tirade for a moment just to purse his lips and correct himself reluctantly.

“You just seemed pretty confident that I wouldn’t need to intervene. I was trying to ask why.”

“Even if Peter doesn’t think she can be reasoned with, I still think Scott might stand a chance. Besides, Plan A is just to get him out of the circle and keep her inside, but I really doubt she’ll make it out of that circle. You can’t even do it, and you’re the high and mighty Alpha.”

“Plan A? What’s Plan B?”

“We all go in and gas her until she’s downed. No one fights her directly until Plan E.”

“And the plans in between?”

“Plan C, werewolf driver-awayer things to keep her in the circle. Plan D, Peter projects onto her, makes her stay. And um, Plan E, if Peter screws that up, the Betas will fight her. In no plan _ever_ are you supposed to get close to her so don’t even try it!”

Stiles put his foot down, literally, for the extra emphasis though with the way Derek eyed him, the message didn’t even come close to sticking.

“I might be more inclined to listen to Peter if he actually gave me a real explanation. Unless he already told you.”

Stiles shrugged. “No, nothing, not a word from your dear old Uncle Creepy, but don’t take that as an invitation to try something. If he’s this adamant about keeping you two separated, I’m just going to assume that he has a good reason. I mean, the guy’s got a hard-on for starting shit, but today he’d rather separate you two?”

Derek raised a hand to his mouth, rubbing it against the stubble on his jaw. “He says he’s doing it for my benefit, but I don’t see how projecting on her again is any safer.”

“Isaac called her a loose cannon, you know, and I’m inclined to believe him. I know human-Aisling wouldn’t go out of her way to hurt someone, but in the five minutes she held a _partial_ shift with him, she tried to rip out his throat. Keeping a safe distance is our best option, and if Peter has an option to maintain that distance, I’m all for it.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. Wolves aren’t meant to be suppressed like this.”

Stiles groaned, even more flustered now than when he first came to check up on Derek. Bouncing from Peter to Isaac to Chris and Allison left him even more ill at ease. No one expected any good from this, but Stiles supposed it was still encouraging that no one had left yet either. Even if they all expected the worst to happen, they seemed committed to keeping it contained to the reserve.

Which, Stiles supposed, was really the best they could hope for.

* * *

Dr. Deaton stayed with Aisling in the center of the circular clearing for much of the morning, leaving Stiles to explain his many backup plans to the others. Very few of them cared to know the exact details of the workings of mountain ash or wolfsbane, having experienced both often enough on their own time.

Aisling could feel the influence of the ash around her. Like a wall separated her from those beyond the invisible enclosure. Their voices weren’t quite muffled, but they weren’t distinct either. Even their individual presences were somewhat dulled.

Even so she could tell the difference between human and wolf.

“Who are those two? The ones Stiles was talking to before, the blonde and the big guy?”

Deaton gave her a weak smile, but it brought only caution into his features.

“That would be Boyd and Erica. They were both bitten by Derek a short time before you arrived. Maybe once this all blows over, you can meet them under better circumstances. For the time being, I think it would be best to not let them distract you.”

“Why would they distract me? They’re only two perfect strangers, here to watch me make a total fool of myself if I’m lucky enough to not _die_.”

“So much angst, I shouldn’t be laughing, but you shouldn’t let your emotions get to you right now. I know that this is all new to you, and that you are afraid, but these people are here to help. Just imagine how this news might have been received even a year earlier. You would already be dead, and your uncle would have been the one to put a bullet through your brain.”

“I don’t know how that was supposed to make me feel any better,” she groaned and kicked at an unfortunate tuft of grass with the toe of her boot.

They continued to make small talk, mostly concerning the past of the pack before Aisling’s ill-fated return to Beacon Hills, for much of the rest of the afternoon while Chris and Allison worked on preparing the bait mixture. Derek hadn’t had much success either since he ventured back into town. Aisling couldn’t even begin to imagine how she would have reacted if she’d been summoned to Beacon Hills because Allison had been murdered. She’d known from the whispered comments about Peter behind his back what he’d done to his own niece, but having confirmation did little to ease her mind.

How could Derek even trust the guy enough to let him live? It was one thing to keep him around for his information, but two Alphas, even one forced down from his position, in one territory rang all sorts of warning bells.

Sitting in the clearing Aisling didn’t have much more to do than pull at the grass to keep her mind from dwelling on what was about to happen. Even through the ashen wall she could hear them constantly repeating the same question over and over.

“What do you think will happen?”

They didn’t even know and they still didn’t expect her to last the night. What chance did she really stand? With the exception of Allison and Uncle Chris and Dr. Deaton, they’d been wolves for ages now. The transformation had stopped being a wonder, a curse, long ago, but what awaited Aisling now was more than that. She wasn’t just going to take its shape; she was going to become it, body _and_ soul.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I know this one was short, like exceedingly so, but what'chu gonna do? I got my first round of midterms coming up starting Monday.
> 
> And here's the bombshell, but I'm considering stopping after the next chapter! There will be a second part coming November for NaNoWriMo so I guess there'll be more updates, but I really don't know. Just wanted to keep you posted if you're still reading.


	12. And We All Fall Down

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter as I head into NaNoWriMo!

“Dr. Deaton!” The call came from outside the ash line, downwind from the she-wolf.

Through the trees, Chris Argent strode forward, never stopping or slowing his stride even when the branches tried their very best to hold them within their dark depths. He looked every bit the hunter, a realization that filled Aisling’s heart with dread. His legs were strapped with knives, daggers tucked into his boots, more blades hidden in the folds of his coat and likely a larger one to the small of his back beside his weathered handgun. When his eyes met hers, he didn’t even recognize her as one of his own; he looked at her like a beast that deserved to be put down, not out of mercy but to eliminate a threat.

She rose from the grass, her legs unconsciously moving beneath her to edge her body backwards.

He’d helped his wife kill herself after she turned, but he hadn’t come tonight to do the same for Aisling.

In that moment she understood what he expected of her and why he’d even offered to help at all. The only way she could be permitted to live was if she survived the night on her own strength. If at any point she posed a threat to anyone, she wouldn’t live long enough to hear the trigger. He had come prepared to put down a monster, not to protect his niece.

By the same reasoning though, that meant he didn’t believe she could do it. If she had to ask herself, she wouldn’t either. She didn’t have the same complete presence of mind the others did. Her mother and her aunt had seen to that, and whatever possessed her to sleep walk (and she was definitely going with the possession theory) had also thrown her self-control for a loop.

She was doomed.

“We’re ready for her,” Chris spoke quietly, but he never stopped following Aisling with his eyes. Like a wild mustang, she paced at the top of the hill, tossing her head as much as she coursed her fingers through her hair, just adding to the illusion.

The veterinarian nodded and waved some hand signal to the gawky teenage boy, who trotted off to deliver the message to the pack. Everyone dug in their heels and in a wave of motion, pulled their respirators into place, hands wrapped around the handles of the gas machines, their claws shining in the fading daylight.

Aisling flinched at the sound of arrowheads being driven into the soft earth. So many arrows, but more than likely the majority was flash bombs rather than piercing heads. Of course, that was all speculation, and Allison hadn’t been at liberty to divulge that information on the drive up to the reserve. Something about not giving the wolf the advantage.

The next time she could hear perfectly clearly the sounds beyond the ring, Stiles was kneeling with both hands on the thin line of ash, spreading a path just wide enough for Scott to step inside, before it was sealed off once more.

“Good luck, buddy,” Aisling saw more than heard Stiles tell his best friend.

To his credit, Scott didn’t look half as scared as Stiles when he entered the circle. He just shook himself when the circle was closed behind him. He felt the disturbance just as keenly as Aisling did.

Slowly he made his way over to her, hands noticeably held out at his sides. She ran her eyes over his entire figure repeatedly, making sure he was just as unarmed as she was. If she backed up whenever he tried to break the distance between them to less than five feet, she couldn’t help it.

“Aisling,” he uttered her name as confidently as he could, but instantly she picked up on the apprehension that bled into the sound.

She stamped her feet and kicked up the earth in pieces behind her in increasing agitation. Still he continued to move forward, guiding her in a circular dance without the least bit of contact between them.

When a hand reached behind him, the buttons of his denim jacket rattled noisily, too loud for the dead weight of silence in the clearing. The Earth herself seemed to hold her breath, anticipating the worst.

Aisling struck out fiercely. That little movement was all the provocation she needed to close the distance between them.

Bright red blood rushed upwards into her mouth once she broke through the skin of his arm. The denim sleeves couldn’t protect him against her elongated fangs, not once she shook her head back and forth, shredding the material. His surprised cry didn’t even register to her, nor did the warning growl when he started to fight back.

Caught off guard, Aisling sailed through the air and landed in a low crouch a short distance away. Scott’s blood dripped eerily from her chin to the grass beneath her right hand. Her other hand meanwhile clutched her right eye as if it pained her.

The unforeseen handicap struck Scott as odd, and he dearly wished Stiles had come up with a way for them to communicate now. He’d stupidly left his phone outside the circle so he wouldn’t have to tell his mother it got broken again in yet another fight with a werewolf.

“Do it. You have to do it now, Scott,” Stiles shouted across the distance for him.

Already the moon was beginning to peek out over the treetops on the far edge of the valley. According to Peter’s instructions, the change had to be initiated before the moon was fully exposed. It was just hard to believe that the change hadn’t begun on its own with how fiercely Aisling had just torn his arm to shreds. His throat dried up at the thought of how much worse she could get. How much worse she _would_ get.

“Force the change!” a different voice yelled.

Summoning all his wolfish attributes to the surface, golden eyes met honey brown and he towered over her, baring his fangs for all the world to see. A hand outstretched in front of him, he pressed his palm to her forehead, half-expecting her to attack him already, but she still hadn’t dropped the hand over her eye. Whatever pain held fast her hand, it retained her sanity just long enough for him to approach her.

Thank the stars for small kindnesses.

He sucked in a deep breath and shut his eyes for the space of a heartbeat. When he reopened them, the golden hue had multiplied in intensity, and the howl that rumbled through his core seemed to shake the earth itself.

When the silence returned and he dropped his head, he realized just why Aisling had been covering her eye.

Vicious scarlet, the pure lupine eye practically seared him to the bone. Only the juxtaposition of her remaining honey-hued eye   kept him from bolting backwards away from the monster that was now rapidly resurfacing for the first time since she received the bite.

All his instincts begged for him to turn tail and run. His strength couldn’t possibly match the unbridled fury crackling in the atmosphere around Aisling’s shifting body. A small part of him though still held fast to Peter’s warning.

“You run and you die. If she senses even a hint of fear, she will attack.”

All he had to do was stand his ground and pretend he could get through this. Right, just survive a werewolf on moonlight steroids. This was exactly how he wanted to spent his Saturday night.

Aisling stood a full foot taller in her new form. Neither Derek nor Peter knew what to expect, having never experienced the loss of the moon for so long, but no one had thought to warn Scott of the possibility of a size difference. Grappling with a smaller wolf would have been simple. He’d trained with the pack often enough and Erica put up a good fight, but Aisling had to be bigger than Boyd now.

Balancing on the balls of her feet, claws out and flexing, toes padding lightly across the grass, Aisling moved sinuously, almost with a doe-like fluidity. Legs crisscrossing elegantly, she dodged every advance and slipped past all Scott’s attempts to drive her to the edge of the defensive perimeter. Every once in a while, she’d lunge forward and take a swipe at him, but she wasn’t putting half as much effort into the strikes as he’d expected.

Out of the corner of his eye, there was a flash of light that grew into a beam that stretched across the circle. It distracted the both of them, but unfortunately, Aisling was the first to recover.

Before Scott even had a chance to register what was happening, Aisling had all her body weight on top of him pressing him against the earth, one hand wrapped around his throat, the other with its claws already driven into his abdomen. Blood speckled his cheeks from coughing against the blossoming pain.

When she withdrew the blood-stained hand, he’d expected a second blow to finish him off, but instead, he was met with a barked order to cover his eyes. He felt the burst of heat from the flash bomb and scrambled off to the side, immediately rising to his feet the moment he could get his feet back under him.

Having been spared the disorientation of the blinding flash, he still had all his wits about him while Aisling was bent over double, once more clutching at her eyes.

This was his chance.

Immediately, he darted for the nearest human on the perimeter, who happened to be Dr. Deaton himself. The veterinarian had the line broken and waiting for him before he even needed to call out ahead of time. Forcing a final burst of energy into his legs, Scott leapt clean over the line and the doctor, landing right behind him.

Behind him, he could feel the hot breath of the beast thankfully still barred inside the barrier. The electrifying force of her red eye had struck fear into the Druid as well, and Scott could feel a little less embarrassed by his own second guessing. He hauled the older man back from the edge by his armpits, but neither could break the foreboding stare down with the wolf.

Aisling lowered her hands to the ground, stretching her legs out behind her, looking every bit the wolf. Her fangs still gleamed with Scott’s blood, a stark reminder of just what she was capable of even without the boost of the full transformation.

Scott fought to hide the wince when the other Betas activated the sonic stakes, but one the bright side, the piercing whine seemed to break Aisling’s concentration, driving her back to the center of the clearing where the effect was less pronounced.

“Dr. Deaton, her eyes,” Scott breathed out when he could drop his eyes from the pacing figure on the top of the hill.

The vet nodded shakily, using his hands to pull himself up against the tree for balance. “I’m afraid we may have a problem.”

And wasn’t that just the best news of the day?

While Aisling still raged safely inside the circle, Dr. Deaton called for Stiles over the radio and had all the other wolves tune in while he explained the situation.

* * *

None of his contacts were of any use. Not even calling late into the night had brought anything useful to light.

Aisling had already fallen asleep by the time he pulled up to the Argents’ home, and in spite of Chris Argent’s multiple levels of anti-wolf security, he managed to get her into her room, leaving her in her damp clothes even with the risk of her catching cold. Better than painting a worse picture of himself, he rationalized.

The red eyes had burned themselves into the back of his eyelids as firmly as they’d implanted themselves in Aisling’s memory, but he couldn’t for the life of him place why they felt so familiar. So many records had been lost in the fire, and he could have guaranteed he would have been able to find an answer within an hour of leaving Aisling if he’d had the proper resources. Only that wasn’t an option anymore.

He was, however, certain the red eyes belonged to a wolf that once dealt with the Hales, a wolf that must have been slighted in some way.

The pack divides, the pack dies.

An ominous warning, and not one that Peter could ignore, not when Aisling would be forced into the change the following night. She’d be at her most vulnerable when it happened. All the episodes of sleep walking, he did the same thing to Lydia. In sleep, they were too weak to break the hold upon their minds. Goading them into committing acts like graffiti or the cold-blooded killing of the deer in the woods hardly required any energy. Back then, the damage Aisling could cause had been limited by her human strength. Now, though, at her weakest, she could be driven to new heights of destruction with little more than a mental nudge in the right direction.

Chris Argent had been adamant about keeping Peter as far from the clearing as possible without distancing himself too much from the fight they all feared would come. Even so, he could feel the change in the atmosphere like a vicious chill in his very blood. Likely, the sensation arose from their linked bloodlines as her creator, but that didn’t make it any easier to stay back.

Stiles’ voice crackled through the radio transceiver at his feet.

“... red eye … may be possessed ... getting used to … emitters … is she- she howling?”

Peter bristled at the news. Murphy’s Law did have a way of coming into play when you least expected.

He scooped up the transceiver and spoke into it quickly. “She’s possessed. Put her down now. It isn’t Aisling anymore.”

At once chatter filled the channel and forced him to hold the radio at arm’s length.

“Plan B! Back to Plan B! Gas her and get her down!”

Against Chris’s instructions to stay back until he was specifically asked to moved forward, Peter edged up the hill to get a better view of the clearing below. Puffs of hazy lavender blue rose from various points around the circle and several more scattered within, products of Argent gas canisters. Another howl sent the radio into silence before the bright light of Aisling’s body striking the barrier signaled her location in the dark.

“Argent, now might be a good time to use the bait? Get her attention away from Lydia’s point of the circle?” Isaac hinted, his voice raw and hurried.

Aisling seemed to place escape from the gas cloud as a high priority, and Peter honestly hadn’t expected her to move from her spot. Yet the moment Chris confirmed the release of the bait mixture, the light of the barrier faded and the fog shifted as Aisling’s lithe body weaved through it, paying no heed to the poison entering her system. It was supposed to be a diluted blend, not enough to kill her at the current dosage, but staying in any concentration for anything longer than twenty minutes went far beyond Peter’s knowledge of survivability.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Peter raised the transceiver again. “Red eyes, Derek, an Alpha is controlling her. He left a message. I won’t repeat it over the radio.”

In a few short moments, Derek reached Peter in the small grove of trees protecting his lookout spot, respirator hanging loosely around his neck. His brows drawn together and his jaw set in a hard line, Peter knew he’d done the right thing not telling anyone earlier.

“What did you do?” Derek growled and flashed his eyes red.

“What did _I_ do?” Peter gaped.

“Yes, what did _you_ do? You’re suddenly offering up information. Why now?”

Now that was a question Peter could answer easily. “I didn’t have a name, and I still don’t. What good would it have done to relay a message without its origin?”

“Depending on the message…” Derek trailed off, looking no less frustrated.

“ _The pack divides, the pack dies_. She left the message after she drew the spirals on the bridge.  Wrote it in the blood of a deer she killed with her bare _human_ hands. A wolf is making her do all this, and if she doesn’t go down soon, worse is going to happen.”

The Alpha shifted his weight from foot to foot until he finally settled on balancing on his left leg. “And you don’t know who might be behind it?”

“I had ideas, but no confirmations. My lead is currently in the wind, with a blood trail behind him, but in the wind nonetheless.”

Derek opened his mouth to speak, but a shrill cry from the clearing snapped it shut.

Through the darkness, both wolves watched Aisling drop to her knees, her fingers clawing at her eyes even as she beat her head against the ground.

“Plan D! Plan D! Peter, anytime now!” Stiles called through the transceiver, to which Peter hastily growled back, “On it.”

“Go down to the clearing, Derek. Your Betas are going to need to extra muscle.”

Projecting had always been an entertaining facet of alpha abilities. Being able to tweak the emotions and actions of your Betas just sounded like the most useful pack hunting asset, and a small part of Peter wished he could convince Derek to use the quirk to hunt with his pack. It would strengthen them as a group, but Derek refused to toy with their heads. Isaac had a past that no one wanted to risk entering. It had taken long enough to gain his trust that Derek was reluctant to break it in the name of pack bonding.

Without the benefit of being a real pack, Peter could only forge a weak connection to Aisling, and the distance failed to aid his cause.

The real barrier though was that he wasn’t the only one inside.

He could see a vague image of what Aisling could see, the edges were so blurred, but the entire field of vision was tainted burgundy. Whatever it was that forced her eye to adopt the red hue before had gained enough of a hold to force itself into both eyes. The little bits of Aisling meanwhile were neatly tucked away in the back of her own mind. That part of her was beyond his reach.

Aisling’s only chance to regain control rested in his ability to wrench that control away from Red Eyes.

From an outsider’s perspective, the internal struggle made for one very poorly coordinated werewolf.

Multiple times her body crashed into the barrier where the nearest person armed with wolfsbane shot the gas into her face. Trying to escape the gas only made her trip over her own legs. What used to be beautiful movements converted into a mess of misshapen limbs entirely out of proportion. Snarling and slavering all over herself, she ran headlong into the river of blood and gore Chris and Allison had put together and dove right in. Teeth seizing a particularly weighty cattle bone, she messed with it until she finally managed to break the thing clear in half.

The smaller bits had little to offer to her rapidly shifting attention, and so with blood dripping from her hair and clothes, Aisling charged again at the barrier.

Although Chris unwaveringly declared that electric shocks could not be used as a defense mechanism, the shock of striking the barrier of mountain ash itself produced the same, wholly undesired result.

Her growls increased in fervor, and the jumbled movements of her arms thrashing against the invisible wall gained a purpose all their own. She dug her heels into the earth, and lowering her body to the ground, crawled forward with her claws, pressing her head forward, looking more like a bull pulling a plough than a wolf. Repeatedly, she lunged against the barrier, pushing farther and farther each time.

On the final charge, the surge of energy from the broken seal momentarily snapped the focus of both parties currently engaged inside her head.

Before Peter’s heart could even muster another beat, the image was gone, but he’d seen what he’d needed to see.

_Deucalion_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said before, this is the last chapter, but instead of studying for my midterm, I already got a head start on PART TWO. That means you get another chapter already!


End file.
